Copying files using linux??

[Geoff]

I have windows XP home, and i was on the 30-day trial, and i had about 27 days left when i changed the clock on my comp since it said october 2004 and i needed it to have the right date. After i changed that, i had to reboot sometime, and when i booted up, it said that i had to activate it. I dont have a cd key and i dont want to purchase it.

The trouble is that i have many documents and files that are on my hard drive and that i want to backup. I download Knoppix Linux-on-CD, and it boots up fine (actually, thats the os that im posting this thread on now) however this is my first time using linux, so i dont know much about it. I hooked up a 40gb IDE hard drive for backup, and i see them both on the desktop, but i cant copy or delete anything from the drives. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Rayen16]

1 Boot Knoppix,
2 Open up a Terminal/Xterm/Konsole (the icon looks like a computerscreen)
3 Make sure you are logged in on 'root' , by typing: "su" (without the quotes). You can see this if you are logged on root if there is a # in everyline you type ex. root@ttyp1[Knoppix]#
If you are NOT logged in as root you'll probably see this:
knoppix@ttyp1[knoppix]$

4 Make a new folder for C on Linux simply type: mkdir /mnt/c/
5 Now 'mount' your C partition by typing: mount -t auto /dev/hda1 /mnt/c/
If you get an error try: mount -t auto /dev/sda1 /mnt/c/
If you get another error, tell me what the error is, how many harddisks have you got in your pc? Is your Windows hdd your first harddisk? What's your C Partition filesystem?

If it does work correctly: try to browse through your files by typing :

cd /mnt/c/ (cd = change directory)
ls (List)
cp file target (copy file)
cp -a directory target (copy directory)
mkdir (make directory)

Remember that you can't write to your Knoppix LiveCD, so copying something there will just simply remove it when you reboot your PC.