Quote Originally Posted by rvbcaboose
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*edit i have found that only the folders are read only, all the files are full permissions.
If you manage to edit a file you will likely corrupt the NTFS partition. Again, this might show up right away, or it might let you save a lot of stuff before it punishes you, but it will get you.

If you no longer wish to use windows at all you may want to repartition the drive and format it for Linux. I would actually recommend installing Debian rather than Knoppix; Debian is intended for installing to a hard disk. Knoppix is intended as a Live CD and causes a number of problems when "installed" to hard disk. However, if you do choose to use Knoppix then you could make the partitions either Linux partitions or Microsoft FAT partitions; Knoppix can write to either; but you have to override the default read-only setting for the partitions. And no, you can not change a partition type with files on it with any common tool in Windows or Knoppix. You need to delete the old partitions, create new partitions, and format them in the new file system before you can use them.