DSL Ideas and Suggestions :: Browsing a HDD From DSL CD
Is there a way to detect and browse any HDD currently installed in the computer. Even if the FS is NTFS? Can DSL browse a USB Pen drive?
You need to mount the drive first. The mount application is found in the slit, the thing usually in the right bottom corner, and has a little pic of a drive and some arrows. Use the arrows to cycle through your devices, hard drive partitions will be something like "hda1, hda5" etc - when you reach the desired device, click the button beside the arrows, and it should light up green.
Now when you go to emelfm, or a command prompt, etc., you can browse the device under "/mnt/" and whatever the device name was, eg "/mnt/hda1" is usually a primary windows partition.
USB will be something like "sda1".
Not sure about NTFS, I think last I checked it could READ NTFS but not WRITE to it, but that may have changed (I formated my WinXP partition as FAT32, 'cause I've had troubles accessing NTFS from a number of different tools)
DSL doesn't auto-mount drives, mainly so you don't accidentally erase a drive when you're playing around without a clue. By making you mount drives when you want to use them, makes you more aware of the fact that the drive is now linked to DSL, so you tend to be a bit more cautious. Or something like that
original here.