file rescue using external harddrive on a laptop

[Slipstick86]

essentially i have a bunch of media files that i'd like to dump on the external, but knoppix, or rather Konqueror tells me that it can't make new directories.
"Could not make folder /media/sda1/AMVmusics"

The same "could not make folder..." occurs when I try to recover files from my NTFS HDD to a secondary computer via FTP. In fact it happens no matter what media I try to send my previous data to. The hard drive is mounted and I'm pretty sure I have the proper permission. Also, copying files one by one seems to work fine. Unfortunately, I cant do that with a 13GB recovery involving thousands of directories.

Note: I'm very new to Linux. I've just recently decided to begin my transition to the light side.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[miasma]

It's looking like i can't do any modifications of the external harddrive. Cannot copy stuff to the external from the files that were in the damaged windows OS.

Knoppix, like just about any Linux distribution is very safety conscious, maybe even more so since it was designed for any Windoze user to pop into their hard drive. Linux is also very powerful and will allow you to do some things you just can't do in Windoze. Going from Windoze to Linux, for some people, can be like going from a bicycle to a race car. That is why Knoppix is very conservative about giving a user permission to do things that have the potential for disaster in untrained hands. Don't let that scare you though, it is a lot of fun to drive Linux and race cars.

Rather than just giving you the commands to type in I suggest you first read up on the chmod and chown commands which you can run from a command line in a root shell. Then you can either copy the files from the command line by using the cp (copy) command.

However, after the permissions and/or ownership of the files are in order you will be able to use Konqueror or another GUI file manager to copy the files. Please do NOT run Konqueror as root, it is not a good idea unless you really know GNU/Linux inside and out and even then it is not a good practice.

BTW, Linux has long been able to read NTFS filesystems and recently Knoppix is reported to be able to reliably write to them. See:
http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=107206
and
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/

To get back to file permissions here is a quick reference to chmod:
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...on-chmods.html

But I suggest reading something more substantial like the following link which also explains chown, and other related commands.
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutil...eutils_13.html

Hope this helps. Welcome to the world of FOSS (Free Open Source Software) be safe and above all have fun.

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Miasma