HELP! Problems mounting/writing to external HDD

So my Vista installation will not boot on my laptop and I wanted to recover my files and then do a complete recovery install. So I came across Knoppix and I have it successfull running through a USB drive on the laptop. I borrowed an external HDD and I hooked it up to the laptop via USB and I can access it fine through Knoppix.

However, when I right clicked it and tried to change read/write mode, it gave me an error saying unable to change because another process may be accessing the filesystem. I also tried right clicking>properties> and then unchecking the box that says "read only". Now, the HDD shows up as being writable, however it will not mount. It gives me an error saying "Could not mount device.....Mount is denied because NTFS is unclean. Choose one of these actions...." and it goes on to list 3 actions like boot in windows and shutdown, run ntfsfix unless you have vista then mount ntfs with force option read-write, or mount ntfs with ro option in readonly mode.

Please help me mount and write!
Thanks

OK so after reading several posts here I have come to the conclusion that I probably will not want to write to this as it is a NTFS drive and I do not have the option of formatting it to FAT32. So - can someone recommend a good way to recover those files? I read some mentions of setting up an FTP - can anyone give me a walkthrough because I have never done that. Also - I am not sure if my knoppix is connected to the network bc the internet will not work on it. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by fazzk

OK so after reading several posts here I have come to the conclusion that I probably will not want to write to this as it is a NTFS drive and I do not have the option of formatting it to FAT32. So - can someone recommend a good way to recover those files? I read some mentions of setting up an FTP - can anyone give me a walkthrough because I have never done that. Also - I am not sure if my knoppix is connected to the network bc the internet will not work on it. Thanks.

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If the vista volume is unclean, you only have to mount it read only as youre only reading from it.
Your externally formatted NTFS HD will need to be mounted with write access as you are going to copy data onto it.
This is the easiest way as you can drag and drop files onto the external HD.

Using FTP requires a saecond computer and is unneccesary.

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Originally Posted by hal8000

.....Your externally formatted NTFS HD will need to be mounted with write access as you are going to copy data onto it....Using FTP requires a saecond computer and is unneccesary.

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Unless, of course, corrupting a NTFS disk because you wrote to it with Knoppix is a problem. Then safely transferring the files across a network may in hindsight seem like it would have been a very good idea.