[rditto48801]

I learned about the down sides of overwriting saves early on, around my second or third patrol. (I am on patrol 6 or 7 iirc)

I now make sure to make each save with a new name, usually a single name with something like 1A, 1B, etc, at the end, to differentiate them and make them into separate save files. It results in a long list of saves by the end of a patrol, but it means none of the saves have been overwritten.
At the end of a patrol, after I make a new 'in office' save, I will go and delete all of the saves I had made while on the last patrol, in order to free up disk space, and so I can use 'familiar' save game names for the next patrol.

I have had saves near convoys before, without any trouble while loading or saving (except once I could have sworn two ships dead in the water had 'swapped' places from where they were when I had saved previously.)

I edited both my desktop and start menu shortcuts to replace the gu.exe with sh4.exe
Not like the darn thing needs to always check for new patches that will likely never come.

I spent maybe a half hour digging through google and whatnot to find updated drivers for my video card and the latest motherboard specific audio driver for my on board audio.

If there is one thing I hate, it's when a lot of effort goes into something, just to have said effort be effectively flushed down the toilet.
I do not like the idea of having to restart a patrol, and I definately do not like the idea of having to wipe the slate clean and start out from the start.

Edit:
A bit of an update.
I decided to get back to SH4 after a very brief break, and now it seems even the 'good' saves won't load.
Talk about discouraging.