First, I am a complete newbie, but capable and willing to learn with Linux.

I'm running Windows XP Home, I have Knoppix burned onto a CD, and I have four 100gb partitions that are locked due to security set before my last format. All partitions have sensitive data that I need to keep.

How would I go about copying this data, or changing security settings for these drives, through Knoppix?

Thanks.

What do you mean by locked? The only thing I'm aware of causing problems is if the files/directories are encrypted by windows. You'll need to boot into windows and decrypt them, as there is no way to decrypt them elsewhere.

Really, we need more information about what you're trying to do before we can help you....

Sure.

In Windows XP Home, I downloaded the software from Microsoft to enable the "Security" tab when you right click a folder and select "Properties"

In this tab, it allows you to deny or allow access to a user, or group of users, to said file. In my case, it was entire partitions.

Now the problem I'm having is, I can't get into those partitsions now that the main drive has had a fresh install of Windows done. I can't take ownership and set the permissions either. I've been told by a few people that Knoppix could bypass the security settings (they're not encrypted, no worries there) and copy files from those drives.

I'm perfectly fine with copying them to another drive and formatting the old one. That would solve the problem, but I don't know how to do this.

If you need more info, click here: http://www.computing.net/answers/win...lp/173244.html

Problem solved.

I booted from the Knoppix CD and it was like using a Linux machine. I've known for years that Linux is more secure, but now that I see how easy it'll be to learn to use, I'm going to be making that switch very soon.

Thanks.