copying ntfs data via ext. dvd burner or hd

[linusr]

Hello: I'm a relative newbie to linux & knoppix. PC is a vaio laptop about a year old. I want to remove data on an NTFS partition by booting with knoppix 3.8 cd, and using that knoppix to detect the USB external pioneer dvr-107 dvd burner, and burning data onto a windows formatted (i presume it's fat32) DVD-RW disk. But:
-I looked in /mnt and /etc/fstab, and didn't see the DVD drive mounted, nor does icon for drive appear. Also, an external floppy drive has an icon on desktop & apparently exists as /dev/fd0 in fstab, but a dos floppy does not open & error msg pops up that "file:/mnt/floppy does not exist" (logged in as root). So I don't know how to:
- get the external drives detected then mounted
another question:
I may have access to an external fat32 usb 80G hard drive. Will the boot from knoppix 3.8 cd detect that drive so that I can move the data from internal hd to USB external hd? Any advice/links appreciated. Thank you.

[Harry Kuhman]

Hello: I'm a relative newbie to linux & knoppix. PC is a vaio laptop about a year old. I want to remove data on an NTFS partition by booting with knoppix 3.8 cd, and using that knoppix to detect the USB external pioneer dvr-107 dvd burner, and burning data onto a windows formatted (i presume it's fat32) DVD-RW disk. But:
-I looked in /mnt and /etc/fstab, and didn't see the DVD drive mounted, nor does icon for drive appear. Also, an external floppy drive has an icon on desktop & apparently exists as /dev/fd0 in fstab, but a dos floppy does not open & error msg pops up that "file:/mnt/floppy does not exist" (logged in as root). So I don't know how to:
- get the external drives detected then mounted
another question:
I may have access to an external fat32 usb 80G hard drive. Will the boot from knoppix 3.8 cd detect that drive so that I can move the data from internal hd to USB external hd? Any advice/links appreciated. Thank you.

If in writing to a DVD you expect to write to some sort of "formatted RW media" in a packet writing mode, I think you're going to be out of luck. You may well be able to write to a DVD-R (or DVD-RW) in the normal ISO 9660 disk format that is a standard for optical disks and can be written and read by both Linux and that Microsoft operating system. However, are you booting Knoppix from that drive? Is the CD still in the drive? Did you use the toram feature to let you swap out the CD? If there is only one optical drive and you don't use the toram option then you'll need to keep the CD in and will not be able to swap in a blank hunk of media.

You very well may be able to write to an external USB device. I can, but some people seem to have problems with it. It's worth a try.