Firstly, I'm new to linux in general, but so far have been trying Mandrake out and now want to dual boot it with Knoppix 3.6. I'm trying to install it onto a separate HDD, so losing any information is not a problem.

I have had a look through this forum and was unable to find this problem, but if i missed it i really am very sorry and you can feel free to point me in that direction.

Here is what happens: I boot into knoppix and then ctrl+alt+F1 to get into the terminal (?, not sure what its actually called), I then type su to get root (I've also tried without that, which makes no difference) and then type knoppix-installer. Once it comes up and I do my configuration step I click on Install and after saying Yes to the warning screen it then gives me this error:

Error: Formatting of failed. Some messages from mkfs.ext3: Useage: mkfs.ext3 [-c:-t:-] [-b block-size] [-f fragment-size] [-i bytes-per-inode] [-j] [-J journal-options] [-N number-of-inodes]

If I click on partition HDD in knoppix-installer it tells me it cannot open the hdd, i do not have read/write permission. I have tried installing it with the HDD as one large etx3 partition, and also with a 3gig/150meg/rest of drive config, and that does not work.

What am I doing wrong I have tried on a separate computer and get exactly the same error. Perhaps I am missing something simple? I really am a TOTAL linux noob.