Could not write to ... External USB Hard Drive

[autumnhome]

Greetings, all....

My XP failed on me and so I'm using Knoppix to try to transfer some files over to an external USB. Knoppix sees the drive (Hard Disk Partition [sda1 ) but when I try to transfer the files, it tells me that I cannot write to it. I searched the forum and found the following thread:

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5803

One of the posts in this thread said the following:

try this

open a root shell type:
k3b

that will run k3b as root and give you permissions to things you probably don't have permissions to do as Knoppix

I'm a total idiot when it comes to Knoppix (this is the first time I've had to use it - but it certainly won't be the last...I love it!) so I really don't know what the guy's talking about. Does anyone know how to walk me through writing to this drive in terms I can understand?

Many thanks for listening!

[Markus]

Did you try right-clicking the device icon and selecting "change read/write mode" or some such?

[aay]

You don't need K3b to write to usb drives. K3b is for writing to cd or dvd burners. Also, Markus is right. Right click on the device icon and you should be able to navigate to a menu that will let you make the drive writeable. After this you can just drag and drop files to it.

[autumnhome]

When I do that, it gives me the following error message:

WARNING: The partition /def/sda1 is of type NTFS! Writing to this filesystem can cause data loss. Because of that, you should only do write operations manually and expect to have to reinstall the filesystem afterwards. This dialog won't do this risky thing for you and will quit now without changing anything.

This drive is a "Speed Metal" USB External USB 80 gb. It also belongs to a friend of mine and I certainly don't want to screw it up.

Any suggestions?

[Markus]

Yikes! Don't at least do anything hasty with a NTFS drive. Never written on one myself as I use a FAT partition to move things between windows and Linux, but others have successfully used captive ntfs in Knoppix for writing on one.
Hmm, should have noticed the thing about k3b. Not very useful for a usb drive but if you have an extra burner you can use k3b to back up your data. After all, reading a ntfs drive is no problem.

[j.drake]

When I do that, it gives me the following error message:

WARNING: The partition /def/sda1 is of type NTFS! Writing to this filesystem can cause data loss. Because of that, you should only do write operations manually and expect to have to reinstall the filesystem afterwards. This dialog won't do this risky thing for you and will quit now without changing anything.

This drive is a "Speed Metal" USB External USB 80 gb. It also belongs to a friend of mine and I certainly don't want to screw it up.

Any suggestions?

Hmm..., if it were YOUR drive, I'd recommend reformatting it as FAT32 (vfat). Short of that, I'd look to see what other storage options you have. I don't guess you were planning to buy a new HD anytime soon, were you? One other option - there is a guy in the Netherlands who came out with a bootable live CD version of Windows XP, which you could use to write directly to the NTFS partition. http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ Put it this way, if you have more money than time, buy your own HD upgrade, format it in FAT32 and copy using Knoppix; OTOH, if you have more time than money, you might try the WinPE solution. Or, if your friend is really nice, maybe you could format his external in FAT32, offload your backup files, and then reformat to NTFS (if that's what he wants) once you get your Windows running again. I have to say, I cannot see the logic of an external drive being formatted in NTFS, unless it's being used more or less as a permanent HD. The nature of USB drives is to be portable - to do backups and the like, so the added security of NTFS makes little sense to me (but, hey, it's not my drive).