Harddrive Crash Help...

[DTull]

I am a definite newbie to Linux/Knoppix. I used to play around a little with the Knoppix 3.3, but am rusty at best. My problem is this... My wife has a Dell Latitude D620 and the harddrive decided to crash, placing approximately 35gb worth of pictures in peril. Some of these have been backed up, but others have not and I was needing to get them off before I reformat ( These pictures include wedding/honeymoon, etc.- very important to my wife ). We tried to speak with Dell but of course they want to charge over $150 just to look at the drive with no guarantees, so I figured I would try myself first. I have a Western Digital External/USB Harddrive that I am trying to copy the pictures to, but I cannot get it to recognize the drive. I am currently using version 3.3, because it is what I had from the past, but am in the process of downloading 5.1 to see if that would help. Any thoughts or comments? Again I am a newbie and am at the stage where I understand what is going on if someone leads me in the direction, but am lost on my own, and am afraid that I may screw something up if I just blindly fire commands. We appreciate any help, and for instructions...the simpler the better

[OErjan]

those WD USB diss use a weird acess scheme, you will have little luck in linux, sorry. a new external disk is still half of what Dell wanted...

[DTull]

Is there a certain external harddrive that plays better with Linux than others?

[OErjan]

as far as I now only those WD refuse to work well with Linux.