USB Write Permissions

[Conchial]

I have booted into a failing windows system using Knoppix and can see the files I need to retrieve.
I want to copy them off to my USB maxtor drive but when I try to write them down I am being told that I do not have the permissions required.

Can anyone help me ? Im brand new to all 'nixes

[Harry Kuhman]

I have booted into a failing windows system using Knoppix and can see the files I need to retrieve.
I want to copy them off to my USB maxtor drive but when I try to write them down I am being told that I do not have the permissions required.

Can anyone help me ? Im brand new to all 'nixes

Knoppix by default will open partitions as read only. It sounds like you need to change the permission on the USB Maxtor drive to read write.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. DO NOT SKIP PAST IT JUST BECAUSE YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT. If the USB drive has a NTFS partition on it, you will not be able to write to it without corrupting it. If the disk is empty you will need to reformat it. If it has files that you want to keep on it, you will need to back them up somewhere else or simply not use this USB disk. DO NOT try to use Knoppix to write to an NTFS fromatted drive.

If the Maxtor USB drive has a FAT partition on it, Knoppix can write to it safely. Boot Knoppix. Find the desktop icon for the USB drive FAT partition. Right click on it. Pick the actions ... sub-menu and change the access to read/write.

[Conchial]

That makes a lot of sense to me.

I tried another USB drive with the same result so I am guessing the file system is the most likely culprit.

Riddle me this , can I format the drive using any OS ? I seem to recall from antiquity that certain media when formatted by windows would routinly fail in other systems , even as fat.

I appreciate the advice and the warnings.
I could have lost a few gigs of backups if I had tried to hard to force Knoppix to write to that particular drive.

[Harry Kuhman]

Riddle me this , can I format the drive using any OS ? I seem to recall from antiquity that certain media when formatted by windows would routinly fail in other systems , even as fat.

You can reformat it with Windows. You can also reformat it with Knoppix, but I've never done it that way and can't think of a good reason to, except see below.

One thing to be aware of is that XP will not let you format a large FAT partition. I think the size they limit FAT partitions is 32 gig (but I'm getting ancient and could remember that wrong. There is a rather restrictive limit though.) The solutions are to make multiple FAT partitions, make 1 fat partition and the rest NTFA, or, my choice, use an older version of Windows or a third party partition/format software and make a nice big FAT. XP will still be able to read it fine, it just refuses to create it.

[lannie1]

You have maybe just saved my hide. I never realized that you can't write (safely) to
an NTFS formatted drive. I have a question though that may be related. I had a bunch of
my old Bourne shells on floppys and I was making them compatible with Linux BASH
and I discovered that BASH had written some of its echo stuff to the shellscript file itself
so that instead of an updated shellscript I now have a corrupted shellscript on floppy.
Any comments on that?
Lannie Walker,Sr

[gnukish]

Formatting, the USB drive through disk manager in ms-dos, or using partition magic can do great help.
You can goto a nearby neighbor and ask help to format.

Sorry, if my comments are weird or offends the ppl here.