Wanted: Live CD Linux that will auto detect and recognize virtually all type drive format

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 18:47:58 GMT, Alan Fried staggered into the Black Sun and said:

What, specifically, do you mean by "a hard disk of all formats"? Do you mean "the liveCDs I tried were able to detect SCSI, IDE, and USB disks that had x86 parbreastion tables, but failed when asked to detect SATA disks with MacOS parbreastion tables"? Details Count.

Think about what you're asking, and you'll realize that it won't work. MacOS runs on PPC, Windows runs on x86, Linux and BSD run on many different architectures. It is *not* possible for PPC binaries to run on an x86, or vice versa, without an emulation layer. Emulation layers are *slow*. The easiest and best solution is probably one LiveCD for each architecture.

If you meant "is it possible for an x86 LiveCD to recognize all possible disk controller types, parbreastion types, and filesystems that you commonly encounter on the x86?" then that may work better. x86 machines usually have either x86 or BSD parbreastion tables. You currently find IDE, SCSI, SATA, USB, and Firewire disks on x86 machines. (ST-506 and ESDI are obsolete, thank $DIETY.) SATA and SCSI are the most problematic; the first because it's relatively new, the second because of the cabling and termination and goats.

The FAQ posted there says:

Q. PCLinuxOS doest seem to see my SATA Drive? A. SATA drives are NOT fully supported in this release.

...so it doesn't do SATA. It's also x86-only. If the OP wants to run a rescue system on x86 machines that don't have SATA, he might find it useful. The OP's comments make me think that's not what he wants. OP, could you clarify what exactly it is that you want? Thanks....

-- Matt GThere is no Darkness in Eternity-But only Light too dim for us to see Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong