I have downloaded SuSE 9.1 live CD and am using it on a windows p.c. Can I use it to access the windows hard-drive (without damaging it) and if so how and if not can I use something else to do this.

Also is there any way I can boot the cd using a floppy as the bios on some computer's does not let me boot off the hard-drive.

Thanks for any help that can be offered.

I read your post, and almost passed it by. Then, I read your sig... I really did laugh out loud.

I don't know SuSE's live-cd, but I've used a couple others... Mostly Knoppix and derivatives.

If your Windows is on a FAT32 filesystem, you can read/write to it with very little chance of doing any damage. If it's on NTFS, then it might be dangerous to write to it. I don't have any dual boots, so I haven't studied it too much. You should be able to read it without much danger, but last I looked (about kernel 2.4.20), write access was still sketchy.

You can mount it with the command...

# mount -t vfat /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

Change the -t (type) to ntfs if that's what it is. Change the hda1 to the correct drive and partition (hda is primary master, hdb is primary slave, hdc is secodary master, and hdd is secondary slave. The number is the partition number.). And, you'll need to create a mount-point for it, such as /mnt/windows. It's just a directory.

If it doesn't give you any error after the mount command, it should be mounted. You can check with...

# ls /mnt/windows

And when you are done, you can unmount with...

# umount /mnt/windows

No, it's not a typo, it really is UMOUNT, without an N betwxit the U and M.

Thanks for the help. I will try it as soon as I can. By The Way the sig... is a quote from the author Terry Pratchett.

I use SUSE 9.1 Pro, and it automatically finds your windows partition and assigns it to /windows/C. You should just be able to click on the 'My Computer' icon, then on 'Windows' and you have it. (It will automatically be added.)

As far as the safety goes, I have never had a problem when writing to a NTFS partition. However, the combination of FAT32, NTLD, and whatever SUSE 9.1 uses for partition resizing seems to be fatal. So, if you intend to resize a FAT32 partition with an NT system on it with the SUSE installer, be sure to check SUSE's website for a patch they provide first.

MWM