Unable to touch files on a Hard Drive

[nessin]

I recently got rid of a Linksys NSL device which I had a HD attached too for network storage, primarily because when I switched to Windows Vista I couldn't connect to the HD as a share anymore, and didn't want to bother with fixing the problem since I was the only one using it (figured I'd just be easier to connect it directly to my machine). The problem is Windows sees the drive as having a healthy partition with no default drive letter and it won't let me assign one. So I decided to break out Knoppix (which is what I normally use for non-gaming activities) to see if I could pull the data off onto my thumbdrive and then format the HD. Problem is I can see the data on the drive, can even copy the folder structure over, but whenever I try and touch a file I get an error that just says "Could not read (filename)". If I try to use the 'cp' command through a terminal window the command reports that it is "omitting" the directories and files on the HD.

I've adjusted the permissions and ownership to ensure I have full access to the files and ensured the mount point was read/write, but I still keep getting the same problem. Any ideas?

[OErjan]

what filesystem are you writing to?
you are trying to copy to a FAT, ReiserFS or EXT2, EXT3 filesystem right, if not, there might be an issue as to the ability of Linux to write to the partition.
my personal experience is that if you see the files you shoule be able to copy them, BUT, i hae had damaged disks act werid, listing the files but not being able to acess them and once it was a weird FAT filesystem that had too many tables to work withut the makers special drivers, it listed the filenames but it did not know how to acess them fully.
there are other een werider things out there.
have you tried to use the comand below

sudo cp -a /mount/point/disk* /new/dir/

if yes, hmm, interesting,
what does the command

mount

say? (yes just mount)
output from

df -h

may be of help.