Hi!

I'm playing around trying to create a USB drive with a linux distro that can save/repair/break into Windows machines. It looked like the official Debian Live Rescue disc was the winner; it's got the packages I want to use.

However, when I try it on the machine I'm trying to repair atm, it can't find the laptop's internal hard drive. fdisk -l gives nothing, only the USB drive I'm booting from.

Does anyone know what might be wrong?
I've tried on two separate laptops, same result. One of them is a windows machine, the other a linux. Neither drives show up. Both laptops can boot their "own" operating system.

The Debian Live is Debian 7.6.0.

If start a Debian installation, it can see the internal drives.

Usually a Live CD see's the fdisk cmd--


Try parted -l small letter L.

Did you check the integrity of the iso file (md5sum) before you burned it?
It could be corrupt.

yeah, the md5sums check out.
parted -l gives only the usb disk, same as fdisk...

Have you tried using file manager?

A Dell? Sony? HP? what make and model? (your laptop)
I can look up the specifications and motherboard to help.

Another idea, look through the output of the dmesg command. (any errors or warnings)
Look in your BIOS and see what is being shown for the HDD and how it's set in the "boot order".

On my machine my CDROM drive is listed first in the boot order and if there isn't a CD or DVD in the drive than the BIOS looks to the HDD next.

Ok
Let's start from the beginning
Are these machines broken?
Have you tried the File Manager? What you're looking for may be under /media.
Have you tried mounting drive/drives?
Have you tried Disk Utility? Disk Utility will show the drive & also give option to mount.

Can you please answer all of the questions so we can get an idea of what's going on?

1 members found this post helpful.

duplicate of previous post

apologies for the late answer: I'm travelling.
I'm in champagne. I might be slightly tipsy.

So: one of the laptops is an emachines d520.
The other one I've momentarily forgotten which one it is. Old as hell. Vista.
But yeah, looks like it's a driver problem: another bootstick could fine the emachines' hard drive, not the fujitsy.

both machines can boot on their own, so harddrives work.

-:-Please answer EDDY's questions in post #7--:-

Is this the emachine that you have?
http://www.cnet.com/products/emachin...am-120-gb-hdd/

I've just downloaded debian-live, getting ready to check it out for a while.

I just booted debian-live both 32-bit & 64 bit I wasn't able to getmouse working in failsafe so I couldn't get around the desktop.
Anyway I entered the console & ran sudo fdisk -l & was only able to get output from my flash drive & my external hdd.
Anyways I'm going to try & get my touchpad recognized so I can go to desktop.
I haven't tried fdisk without my usb drive connected so I'll try that next.

I was having trouble with my debian-live-cd until I realized that my system had "Disk Image Writer".
I was using unetbootin from my Debian & Windows 7 machines & images from both machines had problems.
This time I used Disk Image Writer & everything was recognized, I think that the problems that I was experiencing were from unetbootin.

@monkeyslut where did you get your rescue cd & how did you install to usb?

Yes, I used unetbootin, I'll try with disk image writer.

The machines work.
I haven't tried Disk Manager.
Is that a text application? I'm using terminal mode due to graphics card issues - one of the machines will not boot with graphical interface. I've tried with mount and fdisk commands, but cannot find the drives to mount them.

I downloaded the image from Debian's official site.

It's a GUI application. Not sure if it's available thru cli.