Copy all HDD contents to external (Not Clone)

I offered to help out a friends parents reinstall XP on their 4 year old desktop. Its been a good couple years since a reinstall and they have important files scattered everywhere. The XP install is amazingly slow and barely operational so I figure it would be quicker to just back up their entire C-drive onto an external and have them go in and transfer the important stuff back off. This isn't how I personally do it, but I also don't get myself into the situation. In the past I have booted up Knoppix(Live CD) and just did a Copy & Paste from the C-drive to the external one. But Knoppix doesn't like this external HDD for some reason. Anyone know of another Live cd or something I can use to transfer files which isn't a Bit-For-Bit cloner?

 

Some linux live CDs are better at mounting drives than others. Ubuntu is pretty good at this so that'd be my first choice.

 

Try "sfc /scannow" in cmd and see if that helps make the PC faster. Maybe, they misplaced some important files, etc.

 

Ok, Ill give it a try. I didn't know they had a Live CD. Thanks!

 

Well Ubuntu worked nicely with my external HDD. But now I am having a different issue I have never had before when I was using Knoppix. From in the Ubuntu live CD I can see all the files I backed up to the external HDD. But in Windows, it says the drive needs to be formatted. How can I see and transfer files from within windows? I've searched quite a bit but I'm having trouble finding relevant information which isn't for 2-3 year old versions of Ubuntu.

Thanks again for all the help!

 

What filesystem was the external HDD using?

 

just use the unbuntu live disk to move everything back