One of the coolest things you can do with Knoppix, and I myself have done this for several people, is recover data from a crashed Windows machine. Boot Knoppix, mount the Windows hard drive, and then copy the data over the network to another drive. Wipe the drive, reinstall Winders (or, better yet, install Linux), restore the data, & you're done.

The hard part is that copying data over the network stuff. Oh sure, I know how to do it, but I understand SFTP and SSH and SCP and SMB and all that crap. What about your average Joe? He's stuck.

Until now. I just found the coolest web page, Computer First Aid Using Knoppix, written by Cedric Shock and Susan Sullivan, that explains - with screenshots, copious details, & clear writing - exactly how to recover data from a hard drive using Knoppix.

An aspect of this piece that is especially nice is that it covers several different ways you can get that data off that machine:

# Floppy Disk: This requires that you have a floppy disk drive and that the files you are trying to save are small.
# Zip Disk or Other Removable Disk: This requires that you have a zip drive or other removable disk drive.
# CDROM: Burning files to a CD requires that you have two CD drives. You must have the CD drive that Knoppix was booted from and another CD drive that can write CDs.
# E-mail: You need a working internet connection through a local area network.
# Windows Networking: You need a working connection to a local area network, and another computer on the network with a shared folder that you can copy files to.
# Another Hard Drive or Partition: You need another hard drive installed, or another hard drive partition on which to rescue your data.

This is a page to add to your del.icio.us bookmarks, gang. Print it out & keep it handy for folks. Heck, memorize it like the bards of old & declaim it at your next geek meeting. Just go there!