[Everything Inan]

"then use cd and move into the directory of the hard drive in the laptop"

how doest i do that?

EDIT: wait hold, i didnt see your second reply when i typed this, i shoudlve refreshed, let me look it over

[horndude]

when a drive is mounted.....first part is its device name like /dev/hda1 meaning device,harddrive ide, number 1( A ), partiton 1

then the second part is where it gets mounted, it can be anywhere, theres a config file in the /etc directory of the linux your running that usually defaults to /mnt/WXYZ, but if a drive isnt mounted you can mount it wherever you want

[horndude]

oh ya, it may give you grief over the copying command, use this cp -R * /mnt/sda1

that will RECURSIVELY copy everything, thast what the -R switch will force

[Everything Inan]

"now with winXP you may need to be in /dev/hda2 or /mnt/hda2 once its mounted to get the actual files you want(I think XP uses 2 partitons,one for boot,and one for the actual files), to do that you can unmount it altogether or just mount /dev/hda2 somewhere like /tmp,then cd /tmp;ls to list it"

im not sure what this all means as far as what im supposed to do? i typed cd /mnt/hda1;ls and it listed my hardrive contents, as you said, but im not sure what the next step is.. like what im supposed to type

[horndude]

if its listing all the files you want then just copy them:
cp -R * /mnt/sda1
that will recursively copy the whole thing exactly the way it is

[horndude]

last time I did this with windowsXP it had 2 partitons though, one had only the boot files, but the /dev/hda2 partition had the rest

if this is the case on yours to, do this
mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /tmp
cd /tmp
cp -R * /mnt/sda1

to check how many partitons your laptop drive has do this
fdisk /dev/hda and then hit p when a prompt pops up to see whats on there, then hit q to exit without changes

[Everything Inan]

Originally posted by horndude
if its listing all the files you want then just copy them:
cp -R * /mnt/sda1
that will recursively copy the whole thing exactly the way it is

i type that and it give me a list of everything, saying for each folder or file: "cp: cannot create directory/file (file or directory): read-only file system"

so perhaps theres a way to make it readable? since it appears everythign is read only?

[horndude]

ya, your usb drive is mounted read only
unmount it:
umount /dev/sda1
then remount it:
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 rw

now keep this in mind, NTFS is EXPERIMENTAL in linux, I cannot guarantee that this going to work properly, reading is fine, writing is iffy, it might work, it might not

I highly recommend formatting the usb drive as fat32 first, its up to you, you might want to try it as it, thats your choice

[Everything Inan]

Originally posted by horndude
ya, your usb drive is mounted read only
unmount it:
umount /dev/sda1
then remount it:
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 rw

now keep this in mind, NTFS is EXPERIMENTAL in linux, I cannot guarantee that this going to work properly, reading is fine, writing is iffy, it might work, it might not

I highly recommend formatting the usb drive as fat32 first, its up to you, you might want to try it as it, thats your choice

ok i tried that and it said, for each file "cp: writing (file/directory): No space left on device"

(and yes, it is formated)

but so, do you think that if i format the drive in fat32, it will work? im not sure how to do that.. i formated the portable using a different computer, and it seemed to only give me the option of ntfs when i right-clicked on the drive and went to "format drive"

[horndude]

ya it should work as fat32 definitely, no im not sure how to do that from windows, it shouldnt be showing as full either, not sure what's up with that

while your still there and its mounted, do this:
cd /mnt/sda1;ls and see whats on it, if its got stuff on it you dont want do this:
rm -rf * that will delete EVERYTHING
if that works, you can try to copy stuff back into again