My computer (Windows XP SP3, two NTFS partitions) was acting odd this morning, so I rebooted. Only before shut off the hard drive kept going kzzh kzzh kzzh and would not shut off. So I manually turned the box off and brought it back up. The hard drive continued to kzzh kzzh kzzh. So I threw my Knoppix CD in and hoped for the best and got it. The machine booted to Knoppix Linux and the hard drive eventually stopped kzzh kzzh kzzh-ing and data on both partitions is accessible.

So now I have a shot to copy the data onto an external and then copy the HD (160 GB) onto a larger IDE internal. But I am afraid to try to copy and install the new internal HD without saving all the data to an external first, but I have no idea if under Knoppix I can plug in a USB external and it work. Anyone hook up an external to a Knoppix Linux installation? Are there certain externals to look for or avoid? I may only have one shot at this. If I save the data but can't do the copy to the IDE, I'll live (I have an XP install disc with a license). But I don't want to lose this data. Help urgently needed. Thanks.

Sorry, although I know and run Linux I don't use Knoppix, James. Good luck recovering your data.

I don't have knoppix,but I just tried goblinx micro cd,and then I plugged in an old usb drive that had xp on it. As soon as i plugged in the drive,a program called GTkusb manager popped up which allowed me to explore the drive.Does knoppix have that program(or similar?)

I can check, and certainly on the Windows ME machine that is still functioning I can get whatever I don't have and get it over there. Thanks for the information.

Based on a Google search it looks like Knoppix does support USB drives. Here's a link to some info about it.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Knowing_Kn ... _USB_drive

Thanks, Chris.

No Wikipedia links.Oh wait wrong forum

Great save Chris

Well, Knoppix recognized the new USB drive, but apparently something wouldn't allow me to copy files. So I took a chance and rebooted into Windows. I have installed the backup software and it is now backing up the system.

Many versions of Linux cannot write to NTFS drives/volumes without additional software.
It might have copied if you formatted the USB drive as FAT32.
Sounds like you got it to work, though, from Windows.

Yep, if it was NTFS, then that's almost certainly what the problem was. NTFS write capability is still experimental in Linux and not usually enabled by default.