Single User Mode - mount external drive and copy user files to there

I have an iBook G4 running (I think) Tiger (although it may be Panther). AHT reports a bad HD and it will not boot from that drive. Mounting it via Target Disk to another Mac won't permit me to even see beyond the root directory; just a spinning sunburst at the bottom of the Finder window.
If I boot into single-user mode, I can "ls" and "cd" to see the files and folders in the home folder. Assuming the HD is named "Macintosh HD" and I have a USB-connected hard drive named "Backup", what are the commands I need to use in single-user mode in order to mount "Backup" and copy the user's home folder (there's only one on this drive) over to "Backup"?
As I indicated above, I'm not absolutely sure whether this iBook is running Panther or Tiger.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!

I'm in the middle of copying things.
I did a chmod -R ug+w (IIRC) to the 300GB volume and this made it writable.
I then CD'd to the Pictures folder on the Macintosh HD.
I then did a cp *.jpg /Volumes/300GB/ and found that it managed to copy all of the jpegs that were sitting loose in the Pictures folder. Some of the photos were corrupted but I expected this as the drive is reported to have a hardware issue by AHT.
I'm now in the process of copying the iPhoto Library using the cp -r command. Some files are being reported as bad and can't be copied but, again, I'm expecting this.
Whatever I can get from this drive will be a bonus. I'll mention that I used Drive Genius to duplicate the HD to a disk image and, while this was done successfully, it resulted in a "no filesystem" error when I attempted to mount it. However, I -did- ask for it to be mounted anyway and then used DiskWarrior on it (even though it didn't appear in the Finder). It took a few hours for DiskWarrior to come up with a "preview" of the disk (as the filesystem was thoroughly hosed). The User folder was nowhere to be found and every file that was displayed was corrupt. That's why I'm trying this "out of the GUI" process.
I'll thank everyone who made suggestions; they all pointed me in the proper direction.

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    Well, I've made quite a mess of things. So I have 14,000 songs. Most were added years ago. Looking at the date added in correlation with the exclamation points, it seems as though iTunes forgot the location of most of the songs added before 5/9/06. Mind you, iTunes worked fine (with the exception of doing this whole thing once before) until about a month ago. So, in May 2007, iTunes forgot most of what happened before 5/9/06.
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    exclamation marks? If so, you could try exporting one
    of them as an XML file. Then import it--you'll
    probably wind up with duplicates (playlists, not
    songs). Does the newly imported playlist play, or
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    wouldn't know what to expect, but it might be worth a
    try.
    My playlists themselves are all still the same as they were (though there are exclamation marks all over the place). From what I can tell, they look fine when exported to an .xml (the music folder seems to have the correct path). When I import it, it's the same deal: exclamation points at the same places.
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    export them to XML files, just so you'll have those
    little databases of them. Then, if worse came to
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    I'm not willing to export every playlist, because I have hundreds and it would just take too long. Is there a way to export all or a lot of playlists at once? Anyway, I figured that my playlist data was stored somehow in the iTunes Library file, so I felt I had a backup already. I could be wrong about this, though, as I really don't understand much about the iTunes Library file and .xml and the like.
    Can you drag songs that have exclamation marks into a
    playlist? Somehow, I doubt it. But if you can, you
    could use new playlists to make a record of some
    information that you might want to save if you had to
    start all over again with a new Library.
    Believe it or not, I can add songs with an exclamation point into playlists and they're added just fine (though, they still have the exclamation point). How this works is: I can't drag and drop them into a playlist. However, I can control-click and select "Add to Playlist" and it works. There's another mystery for you.
    Have you looked at your iTunes Library.xml file --
    specifically at the location information for
    individual songs -- to see if the location
    information exactly matches the information you see
    in the Finder? I have found mismatches when
    investigating some exclamation marked files. I didn't
    know how that happened, and I didn't know what to
    about it, but it was intriguing to see evidence of
    some iTunes mischief.
    Is the iTunes feature to start music file names with
    the track number turned on? To my mind, fewer missing
    song file problems occur when this is on.
    Yes and yes. Based on what you told others, I have looked at the .xml of some of the problem songs and the working ones and could find no difference, but I didn't really know what I was supposed to be looking for. I also use the Add Track Number feature and always have.
    If you still have the 28,000 songs in your Library
    and want to go back to the 14,000, you could sort all
    your songs by Date Added and delete the ones you
    added on June 21. Or, if you saved a copy of your
    iTunes Library file before you dragged your iTunes
    Music folder into the library, you could just throw
    out the more recent Library file and reinstitute the
    back-up copy.
    I probably should have done the latter (just restore the backup of the iTunes Library file). Oh well...
    Some advice for future experiments. Try them with a
    small sample if possible unless you're absolutely
    sure they will work the way you want them to. For
    example, drag one album in your Music folder into
    iTunes rather than the whole Music folder.
    This is a great idea. I wish I would have checked my sample more closely or done more tests before I plunged off the cliff.
    Back up your iTunes Library file, as well as your
    Music folder. (You might already do this.)
    Check.
    Those are a few things to think about. They probably
    will not be helpful. Like I said, I don't think there
    are clear answers to this problem. The best I can
    wish for you is that iTunes will magically fix the
    problem, like it did once before. Then, maybe there
    are some preventive measures you can take.
    Since iTunes did fix it once before, I would not
    throw your current iTunes Library file away, no
    matter what. If you decide to start a new library so
    that you can actually listen to your music, rename
    this Library file and keep it around, since it has a
    lot of your metadata in it. You can try it every now
    and then and see if iTunes spontaneously revives it.
    Okay, I will post what I do next, provided that I don't hear any compelling advice and make my own decision (though I should be even more gun-shy after my recent blunders).
    Grant

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