Hi,

I've got a comp with a serial ATA HDD (Dell Dimention 9100 if that helps), and the problem is that most of distros cannot see it. It is located on /dev/sda1, unlike normal HDD. My plan is to dualboot XP/Gentoo, and in order to do that I first have to partition the HDD appropriatly. Usually this is done using one of the liveCD distros, but here's the breakdown:

Knoppix -- freezes up on boot. Still messing around with options but nothing seems to help.
SuSE Live Eval -- does not see the HDD, gives different message while mounting /dev/sda1 than others, but doesn't mount it properly
Gentoo minimal Live CD -- allows me to mount /dev/sda1 properly and sees contents right, however does not recognize my ethernet card (connection is vital for Gentoo install). Also does not have tool to parttition NTFS hdd properly.

That's all I tried so far, and all to no avail as of yet. What I need the most at this point is to have some way of 'seeing' the sda1 as if it was hda1 on a live CD, and running a partition utility (a la Parted). Any suggestions?

Last time I tried kanotix, it managed to see a sata disk. Also did debian sarge netinst cd.