Mark Phillips wrote: > I am trying to use a Knoppix CD to copy an image of a partition to an > external storage device. The Knoppix CD boots without any errors and it > recognizes both the external (firewire) and internal drives. I can mount > the drives and read them. However, I cannot write to either drive. I just > get an error that says I cannot write to the drive. Both drives are > formatted for Widows (the internal drive is for Win2K). The Knoppix CD > reads the permissions rwx for everyone, and the user and group are knoppix. > Since I have not changed the settings for the Knoppic CD, I assume I am > user knoppix. > > 1. What do I need to do to be able to write to the drives? > 2. Can I mess up the drives if I write to them from Knoppix since they were > formatted from Windows? What format are the drives? If NTFS then linux has at best a read-only capability in the kernel. if you are just wanting a raw copy of one partition to another, try unmounting the partitions and using dd to copy them.