CD Booting

[Duabaiun]

When booting Knoppix from a cd is it possible to rename files on a mounted hard drive?

Is is possible to delete files mounted hard drive?
Is there a way to change file permission on a mounted drive?

[Harry Kuhman]

See answer #6.

[Duabaiun]

I am really starting to hate Microsoft. I am using Windows Xp. I see a line in the answer you referred me to that says, "You can't write to an NTFS partition. This is a design choice of Microsoft, not Linux or Knoppix." Does this mean I would be unable to use Knoppix repair files within my Windows Xp operating system?

I mean if I needed to pull some files from my i386 directory and place it in my system32 directory, that I could not because that would be writing to the drive.

[Jacky]

Writing to NTFS with Linux (hence Knoppix) is basically an experimental capability which is being tested. Older implementations of the NTFS write capability were reported to corrupt NTFS disks. The NTFS write capability in Knoppix 5.01 is said to be safe but has some limitations, and in any case has still to be thoroughly tested before it is suitable for use by everybody.

Therefore writing to NTFS involves some risk. Whether you should take the risk or not depends on your circumstances. It depends on how experienced you are with computers, whether you have backups etc.

I have been test writing to NTFS intensively for the last 2 months, but then I do on an experimental system where I am not afraid of losing data. In an emergency, let's say where my XP has crashed, and the last option I have to rescue my system is to use Knoppix, then yes, I would be prepared to use Knoppix to write to an NTFS partition. That's again because here I would have little to lose.

I would not recommend you to do it on your main XP system where you keep precious files and documents. In your case, since you just want to copy some files from one directory to another, I would recommend you do it within Windows.

There are some recent posts on the MS Windows section of this forum discussing Linux writing to NTFS.

Regards.