unable to copy a folder to USB pen drive

[malicej]

I'm trying to recover files before having to reformat a NTFS partition. I'm using Knoppix v 3.9. It recognizes the USB pen drive but when I try to copy files to it - I get an error stating it cannot ... I'm not exactly sure but it seems like it cannot make the folder.

Any suggestions?
Thank you.

[UnderScore]

Probably this: 3 Q: I see the partitions from my hard disk on the desktop and can access their contents when I click on them, but if I try to write to them I always get the error message "access denied". How can I write to my existing partitions?

[Markus]

After booting knoppix with the usb drive plugged in, open a konsole/terminal and do dmesg | tail.
You should get something like:
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 512000 512-byte hdwr sectors (262 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 03 00 00 00
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
sda: sda1
Attached scsi removable disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
usb-storage: device scan complete

You're interested in the part that says sda1 in my output. Your's might be different.
Check if fstab has a line for it with grep sda /etc/fstab, and see what the mountpoint (second column) is, (probably /mnt/sda1 or some such)
Then mount with: sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 -t vfat -o rw,users,umask=000
If the mountpoint isn't in fstab do before mounting sudo mkdir /mnt/sda1