A few months ago, I needed to transfer files from one laptop hard drive to an external drive. Transferring ownership on Windows wasn't working on the laptop drive, so I was told to try a puppy drive. Two didn't work, but Precise did and I was able to transfer the files.

Now I need to do the same thing with another laptop drive to the same external drive. I'm using the same computer to boot the same Precise disc, but this time every hard drive I open/mount gives me a red message warning me that the drive can only be mounted as read-only. That includes the laptop drive connected by USB, the USB external drive, and the drive inside the laptop I'm booting on. The internal one is new, and both laptop drives have been checked recently and came back clean so I don't think it's a series of drive errors.

These two times using these puppy discs are the only times I've ever used Linux, so I don't really know what I'm doing. I only understand it to the extent I've needed to so far. So I may need some things to be explained more thoroughly than normal.

Is the filesystem on the external drive ntfs? You fail to indicate which windows version you are using. windows 8 and newer use always on hibernation and a Linux system will not mount a drive partition that was hibernated. So if you were using this external drive on a windows 8/10 machine, you need to fully shut it down first. If that's not the case, you need to post more details.

I failed to indicate my Windows versions because it didn't seem relevant to me. The laptop drive I'm copying files from was last hooked up inside its own computer and running Vista before I connected it to the Puppy boot. The drive inside the laptop I'm booting on runs Windows 7. The external I'm copying files to has no Windows installation and was last connected to an Android tablet with an adapter. All three are NTSF.

Since the only operating systems you are using are windows and all the disk partitions are windows proprietary filesystems, I would suggest you post at a windows forum or the microsoft support forum. Since you used it before, this is a good example of why we take and save notes on things we do infrequently? I don't use windows or puppy so the only thing I can suggest is to see if the puppy has ntfs-3g installed as it is necessary to write to ntfs. If this is the same media you used before, I guess that wouldn't be it either.

Hi friend, when you said the drive can only be mounted read-only, I remembered similar thing I had.
My PC has Win10, I boot puppy from Usb drive.
When ever an improper shutdown occurs from win10 due to power failure ect, this problem is shown by ntfs-3g for safety reason, I believe.
There are ways to bypass it with some command line parameters for mount command.
But I don't know them.

Also I am a noob when it comes to Linux or computers in general.

Please do some research in this direction, as I may be wrong.
But this is what I remember seeing.

It does look as if the likely culprit is an NTFS filesystem that hasn't been shut down properly.

Check this previous thread out for solutions - http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...te-4175573682/.