One drawback to Knoppix is that it runs pretty slowly until the applications that you use are loaded into memory. This is due to two factors: (1) the filesystem that Knoppix is accessing is a compressed filesystem, so it has to uncompress files/applications as it uses them. (2) this compressed filesystem resides on the cdrom, which is extremely slow when compared to the internal hard disk. Another drawback to the Knoppix bootable CD is that when you boot from it, you lose the use of that CDROM drive while Knoppix is running ( unless you use the cheat code "toram" ). This means that if you only have one CDROM drive, you can't burn CDs, listen to music, etc..

The way we gain performance and the use of our CDROM drive without complicating or risking our Window$ installation is via a "tohd" install of Knoppix. This makes a copy of the Knoppix filesystem on your hard drive (in a harmless way). It only uses about 700M of space. Note: this will not work if you are using an NTFS filesystem.

To get started we:

It's that easy.. once the boot has finished, you can remove the Knoppix CD until the next time you reboot Knoppix. Note:You can also use this same partition as your persistent home if you'd like to keep everything in one place.