Remastering Knoppix in knoppix a beginner's question

I've used Knoppix a lot, but never like now.

My laptop messed up and now won't "see" the hard drive. I believe that either the IDE or the power connection is lose, whichever it is, I don't have the right tools to open it up and it will take a while till I do. Now the good thing is though that it doesn't matter, all I want is my data, I was getting a new laptop either way since the machine was showing it's age...
Knoppix is now my only access and I want to create my own remastered version. Exclude everything that adds (to me) useless wight and add what I need (Opera, NetBeans including the JDK, Hugs98 linux equivalent, something to run every video format, NTFS read support which may or may not be included already).

What I want in and don't ain't the issue.
Like said I have the Knoppix LiveCD and nothing else. Just so I don't have to re-enter my wifi details, change keyboard, time, etc over and over.
I do have an external usb cd burner and I do have an external usb hdd that could be formatted anyway I needed.

Before I even start, is this possible? Can it be done with my setup?
What do I need to read first.

I know of no way to remaster Knoppix without enough hard disk space to (and I really hate to use this term) install it to, then make changes required and repackage it. The persistent settings feature is something completely different, and that sounds more like what you are asking for.

The USB hdd no good for this task then?

Yeah, I'm a total noobie to this aspect of knoppix.

bump?


So there's no way of using a USB hdd instead of an internal hdd to go through this process?