How do I get a backup drive with reiser4 to mount read and write if possible? I'm trying to upgrade from 12 and want to use KDE. I used 12 in the first place to create and backup to this external hard drive in he first place because I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep mint or go with pcbsd.

All my data is in this drive and no where else.

I'm mildly surprised Mint 12 supported Reiser4. If you can't go back to 12 (liveCD maybe ?) it looks like you'll need to patch and build your own kernel and Reiser4progs. Could get ugly.
Try the wiki - click the "Getting started" link.

Edit: looks like gparted maintains reiser4 compatibility; may pay to keep one of their liveCDs around.

This wiki links to reiser4 patches. How are they installed? Are they binaries? Are these kernel patches? If so, how does one go about it? Patching kernels is new territory for me, totally.

It's already backed up. Retrieval is the issue here. Namely how not even pmagic reads reiser4. I just lost $5 on that. Neat software however.

The backup comment is my sigline - just general advice.

I suggested gparted - just checked its latest non-beta, and it has the reiser4 tools.
- boot it
- start a terminal
- mount your partitions
- copy your stuff.

Simple.

Are you sure Mint won't allow you to install reiser4 tools? Coincidentally I have, just before posting this, installed them on Debian Sid and formatted a partition.
Ah, no, I typed too soon. I have formatted it reiserfs by mistake and now I come to try to format it reiser4 I receive an error. So it looks like even though the tools can be installed they can't be used.

Nope, even though they appear to be there, nothing happens. Here's a screenshot so no one thinks I'm freaking insane. God!! This is really frustrating. I'm going to try that live gparted next.

http://i1162.photobucket.com/albums/...ps32fc205f.png

Edit: Tried gparted, doesn't work. It can make or possibly resize partitions. The mount option is grayed out. Back to the drawing board.

I tried the newest patch and they don't work. Neither do the slightly older patches. I used --dry run so I don't blow up my kernel. The patches don't work. I tried 3.10 3.9.2 3.8.5, not just 3.11.1

patch -p1 < reiser4-for-3.11.1.patch --dry run
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 29.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 150.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 338.
3 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 33.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 572.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 623.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 656.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 680.
Hunk #6 FAILED at 688.
Hunk #7 FAILED at 997.
Hunk #8 FAILED at 1008.
8 out of 8 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 31.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 63.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 4.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 196.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 246.
3 out of 3 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
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Hunk #1 FAILED at 245.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 255.
Hunk #3 FAILED at 288.
Hunk #4 FAILED at 1617.
Hunk #5 FAILED at 2196.
Hunk #6 FAILED at 2312.
Hunk #7 FAILED at 2320.
7 out of 7 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1055.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1603.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 10.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 87.
2 out of 2 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 1082.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 2074.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej
patching file run
Hunk #1 FAILED at 2334.
Hunk #2 FAILED at 2396.
2 out of 2 hunks FAILED -- saving rejects to file run.rej

Now what?