I own a Maxtor OneTouch 4 Mini that came with a SafetyDrill bootable CD that, apparently, contains Knoppix. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no idea how to use Linux so I'm completely lost.

Here's the situation: my wife's laptop, a Toshiba Satellite M55-S3292, isn't able to boot into Windows XP. I think the XP install is toast (won't stop rebooting when it tries to launch Windows), but that's completely besides the point.

What I want to do is copy files from her C-drive to the external hard drive (which is USB). Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do this.

I did find this FAQ, but, unfortunately, I'm getting stuck on an error message when trying to access the hard drive.

In Konqueror under "Storage Media" I see a list of three things: "OneTouch4 Mini", "SQ003928" (which is her C-drive), and "SafetyDrill" (which is, I assume, the CD it's running off of).

If I try to click on SQ003928, I get this error message:
Error - Konqueror

Could not mount device.

The reported error was:

The device /dev/sda1, is mounted.

Forced to continue.

Couldn't mount device '/dev/sda1' : Operation not supported

Windows did not shut down properly. Try to mount volume in windows, shut down and try again.

Mount failed.
If I click on "OneTouch4 Mini" I get a similar error message:
Error - Konqueror

Could not mount device.

The reported error was:

The device /dev/sdb1, is mounted.

Forced to continue.

fusermount: mountpoint is not empty

fusermount: if you are sure this is safe, use the 'nonempty' mount option

fuse_mount failed.

Unmounting /dev/sdb1 (OneTouch4 Mini)
Anything I can do? Would making a DVD of Knoppix 5.1 help? Because I'm downloading it right now, just in case.

Thanks! My wife is dying without her computer.