Hello,

To start, I should say that I'm relatively new to linux. I've used live cds off and on for the last two years, mainly because I never had to install anything and the changes that I made were usually reversible.

Yesterday, I finally had it with windows, the last reformat of windows that I did on my laptop was the 12th reformat, I know that linux would be infinitely better than windows.

Anyway, to the problem...

I've used knoppix as my choice live cd for years, I've installed it on my laptop even though its advised not to do the hard drive installation of it.

Knoppix version 4.0.2 is the distro thats installed. I chose the ext3 filesystem to be installed and I chose the debian-type install.

When I used the live cd, it would always display an icon on the desktop when I connected my portable harddrive or my usb drive. Now, nothing happens when I connect storage media thats accessed through usb.

When I google the words "usb, debian, recognize, etc." I only get results that tell me how to install knoppix to portable hard drives. What I want is to be able to access my hard drives.

Even /mnt/sda1 or /mnt/hdb1 don't work anymore. Its like the hard drives don't even connect. What should I do?

Thanks.

[Edit:] Sorry I forgot to mention in the last post, I've seen many different commands through the root shell for debian that allow a user to access say something like sda1. Is there something I can put in the root shell that will allow me to view the files and such on my portable hard drive?

Sorry I forgot to mention in the last post, I've seen many different commands through the root shell for debian that allow a user to access say something like sda1. Is there something I can put in the root shell that will allow me to view the files and such on my portable hard drive?