Copying a drive to a file on another drive - No Windows

[Mokmo418]

Ok here's the setting
The motherboard i used just died on me a few weeks ago (capacitors). This system was à PIII 1GHz that had a winXP installation over a win200pro installation over a win98se installation. So basically it had 2 good reasons to do a clean format. New mobo is a DFI Lanparty UT A64.
Only problem is that the drive winxp is going to be installed has a lot of data i haven't backed up yet (gamesaves, schoolwork, even some plans for a bathroom renovation). So i need to back up all of it onto my other hard drive which hard all the space needed.
Installing windows does not work the system always tries to repair the old installation and gets me a blue creeen of death. So here are the option i've considered:
1)Plug both drives into my mom's computer and move everything (Not tried yet)
2)Use DOS to move all (hasn't worked yet)
3)Knoppix Live-CD (Have 3.3 on a cd but it does not support NTFS like 3.6 <i'm downloading it right now> does)

anyways i'm going for the 3rd possibility

What do you guys think?

 

[Blazer]

move the drive that you want to install XP on to your moms comp and transfer the files{not windows},and format and install XP.
To get better help create a SIG {sys specs}

 

[Zelmo3]

My first choice is option 3. That's the simplest way to do things, and has worked for me the one or two times I've done it.
I've also done option 1, and it works just as well. It's just more work to move things around.

 

[KoolDrew]

Knoppix is the best way to do things like that.

 

[moonsite]

i've tried option 2 many times before. It takes a long time to copy in dos. Go with 3, 1, 2.