thanks much for the quick response,

mounting -rw from the command line allowed vi to write.
but the kde still couldn't save.

not just an answer 6 issue... maybe 6.1 : )
ownership... the new drive was owned by root... while the old drives belong to 'knoppix'

chown -R knoppix /mnt/hdb1

did the trick.

thanks for the help.
nathan.


p.s. thanks for the ext3 caution... but windows had its chance... never again will it preside over a computer of mine.