PC Laptop - want to salvage files

[countzero]

ok, you don't need to use knoppix. there are other live linux distributions based on knoppix. try Feather Linux (light as feather) or Damn Small Linux. They just don't have the eyecandy X and office apps as knoppix does, but they will do what you need to do.

[countzero]

it doesn't mount the windows partitions for you, so you have to mount them manually. first locate a suitable place to mount under /mnt (maybe there is /mnt/win if not you can make a /mnt/win with mkdir command). then use "mount windows-partition mount-location". your windows partition should be /dev/hdXY where X is the letter of your drive (a for master on primary ide channel, b for slave on primary ide channel, c for master on secondary ide channel, d for slave on secondary ide channel) and Y is the partition number. you can see the partitions on your drive with the cfdisk command (be carefully with it though) for example if you enter

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cfdisk /dev/hda you'll see the partitions on your master drive, note the number of the windows partition, then use mount command to mount it

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mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/win

just be careful when you quit cfdisk with the quit command, and not the write command, or you may change the partition table.

http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/mount.8.html

[countzero]

X-ray wrote:
I tried messing about with manual mounting on Featherlinux and I got permission denied.

ah, you should become root to do that. with the su command. sorry I forgot to tell you. Anyway, if you want to write to a NTFS drive, then feather won't help you. I thought there was some experimental NTFS writing support in the new linux kernel, but it's little bit dangerous to use these stuff before they get stable. maybe you should try that bart's bootable windoze ?