File recovery in terminal...errors!

[happienumber]

Ok, i am getting nervous. I thiught i had this under control but i am a bit out of my depth.
I had a partition error on my ubuntu hard drive. It no longer boots. I booted off the live cd, and all my folders apear to still be there but I cant verify this becuase it says i dont have permission to access them. So i researched this problem and found that i could use terminal as sudo su and use copy to transfer my files onto my external hdd. The command seems to work fine but i get a return of : no space left on device.
This hdd is EMPTY.
And i know its accesible because i was able to copy a select few files that it hadnt locked. I researched this error as well but could not find anything at all after three hours of searching so i hope someone here knows how to fix this!

Thank you in advance!

[happienumber]

Never mind. I fixed it. Hooray!