How to copy XP files to external HDD?

[borgward]

I picked up a SimpleTech External 500 GB HDD so that I could copy some files off my neighbors winders Laptop. The laptop boots to something called Dell MediaDirect (supposedly it allows you to play music or watch movies from the optical drive w/o booting to windows), but will not boot to windows. Dell support told her she needed a new HDD. I ran the Dell HDD diagnostics from the Dell Utilities CD. It indicated no problem w/the drive. I booted knoppix , and could see her files. I told her I could install Linux on it, and if that did not work for her she could still go back to windows. Anyway she wants to save her jpegs. The SimpleTech drive was recommended by a GWLUG member. The box says that it is winders and Mac compliant. I told the Fry's sales guy that I was using the drive w/Knoppix to copy files off the broken laptop. He said it would work w/Linux and if not, bring it back. Knoppix sees the external drive as sdb1 and the .exe that came on it. I can not drag and drop folders to it though. I get message "could not write to media sdb1/B000000.JPG" I tried draggingMy Documents to sdb1 and got message"Could not make folder /Media/sdb1/My Documents"

Maybe there is a Knoppix program that does the job? Perhaps this is a command line job? Maybe I should take it back and get an empty external rive shell and buy a drive to put in it?

The Laptop is running XP Home. Laptop was new 2 years ago. 120GB SATA drive.

The external drive is SimpleTech 500 GB USB Permissions are -rw-r--r--

I just noticed that File system is Auto. Whats that? and that the drive is not writable. Huh?

OK I understand that knoppix mounts sdb1 as unwritable. I right clicked on it and selected Change read/write mode. I get "Do you really want to change partition /dev/sdb1 (fuseblk) to be writeable?" I would like to be assured that I can now move the files before going on, as I do not want to do anything that would prevent my being able to return the drive.

[Harry Kuhman]

External 500 GB HDD
I just noticed that File system is Auto. Whats that? and that the drive is not writable. Huh?....
Good question, what is that? I sure don't know what an Auto file system is. But a 500 gig Windows hard drive is usually a NTFS partitioned drive, and Knoppix can not safely write to a NTFS partition. My suggestion is that is you want to recover the files to the external hard disk (as opposed to to a computer across a network) then you may want to repartition the drive as a FAT32 partition drive, which Knoppix should be able to write to just fine (you likely will still need to use the mount command to mount it RW)

[borgward]

OK, Thanks. I am a little confused though. Will there be limitations to what kind of documents can be put on the FAT32 partition? Will this work for MS Office Docs? Can winders applications be handled this way?

Let me get this straight. I copy files that are on a ntfs drive to a FAT32 drive, and then will be able to move them back onto a ntfs drive?

[Harry Kuhman]

OK, Thanks. I am a little confused though. Will there be limitations to what kind of documents can be put on the FAT32 partition?
Yes there will. That limitation is that no single file can be 4 gig or larger in size. Other than that, any file that can be stored on a NTFS partition can be stored on a FAT partition.


Will this work for MS Office Docs?
Yup, as long as they are not 4 gig in size.


Can winders applications be handled this way?
I have no idea what you are talking about, but see the first answer.


Let me get this straight. I copy files that are on a ntfs drive to a FAT32 drive, and then will be able to move them back onto a ntfs drive?
Sure. You know those little USB flash drives that are so popular for backup? Most of them are formatted FAT (unless they are over 4 gig in size), and people backup to and restore from them all of the time.

[borgward]

Thanks I feel reassured now. It's late so will sleep on it though.

Hmm. Thinking maybe I should have 2 partitions on it. One ntfs w/the windows .exe files that came on it and a separate FAT32 one. The programs that came on the drive do incremental backups, etc. That is for the event she decides to maintain the windows route. That should keep her out of my hair. I really hate dealing with Windows.

Here is a description of the drive:

http://www.amazon.com/SimpleTech-SimpleDrive-500-SP-U35-Pininfarina/dp/B000NF6ZK6