i have questions about a couple of topics and they are some what related. First of all i have a DVR that has messed up and i have to send it back. But i have a couple of pay per view movies on there that i haven't watched yet. i heard linux will recognize the HD and i can get the movies on to my computer, is this true? is it as easy as making the HD a slave in my computer or putting in an external enclosure? if not it is probably over my head.

I'll be using Mepis to boot from a CD, will mepis automatically recognize all of my drives? as in all HD, DVD-roms and USB drives that are plugged into my computer?

thank you for any help

Mepis, if it works like all the other live-cd distributions out there, should recognize all your devices that it has drivers loaded for. Try out (usb-devices might have to be plugged in after it's booted, to make sure it gets them, if they don't get up when you plug them before booting) and if it doesn't recognize something, either try to get your hands on it manually (that means mounting if it's a harddisk, cd, dvd or some other media) or giving some extra kernel parametres. But yes, in most cases you only need to boot and plug the devices in and see what happens