Hello,
Thank you for your patience.
I use XP PC. Recently it crashed. Fortunately I had image and was able to restore but in the process lost 4 months of email.
My question is:
Is there a small CD based small linux which I can use to see my drives and copy files across to my dvd drive or other partitions?
I tried Damn Small linux, Knoppix etc. They load but I could not see my hard drives.
Basically I want a rescue OS to get at my files when windows fail to load.
Many many thanks for help.
Raj

I have used both OS's you have mentioned to rescue stuff from crashed winbloze systems. You need to mount the drives in either OS before you can copy the files.

DSL has 3.1 has what looks like an icon, kind of square, on the desktop. It may say floppy on it when you first boot. Click that word area, and it will change to CDRom hda hdb etc. There is another button you click once to mount the selected drive. Then you can open a bash console or the file manager and copy to your hearts delight.

Knoppix 5.1.1 shows icons on the desktop for each partition. If they are not mounted, there will be the lack of a little green triangle in the lower right corner. Click the icon, I think you get a menu, and there is an option to mount. Once mounted, ( read only ) you can copy in a console or use Konqueror to copy away.

Key thing is to mount the partition and then you can copy.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux Distributions and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Try using a live distro called gparted or another one called system-rescue-cd.

try these links,

http://www.livecdlist.com/?pick=All&...cue&sort=&sm=1
http://www.livecdlist.com/?pick=All&...ics&sort=&sm=1

Jake