TR Forums

So I'm trying to boot some form of Linux off of a CD on a Dell laptop so that I can pull data off its hard drive. So far I've tried using the file utils and Linux boot disk options on the Ultimate Boot CD. Unfortunately, whenever I try to mount hda or hda1 from those apps, it tells me the device doens't exist or is not recognized.

Is there something special I have to do to mount hard drives off of a live install, or on a Dell laptop, or somethin'? Any help is appreciated.

you could try mounting /dev/sda

cat /proc/partitions

That will tell you the currently recognized disk partitions and block devices.

fdisk -l /dev/sda (or /dev/hda or whatever valid hard disks you find)

That will list the partition table of a block device and tell you what the partition types are marked as.

Generally you're going to want to mount /dev/sdaN where N is a number (or /dev/hdaN or hdbN, etc.), because /dev/sda is the block device for the entire disk (including the MBR), while /dev/sda1 would be the first partition.

As root, execute the command: /sbin/fdisk -l
(that's a lowercase 'L', not a number '1')

That should list the partitions on any disk devices visible to the system.

As enigma59 noted, the disk(s) may be /dev/sd<something> instead of /dev/hd<something>, depending on whether the disks are PATA or SATA and on how recent a Linux kernel you're running.

If it is a SATA drive it will appear as /dev/sda and not /dev/hda. You then need to mount the appropriate partition, so probably need to do something like