Just an update. After burning the second disk as stated previously, with no significant change in the boot time on the Laptop, I decided I should try the Live CD on my primary Desktop system to see how it worked on that. Knoppix booted to the GUI desktop in about 20 seconds!!! I tried both disks with the same result. I also was able to boot from the USB in about 20 seconds. In all instances on the desktop Knoppix recognized all partitions on my system.

I haven't been able to try the "knoppix noudev" or the "knoppix fromhd=/dev/sdb1" commands on the laptop yet.

The laptop is a Dell XPS M140, one of the Pentium M series. This is one of the better laptops they ever made. It is most definitely a PATA HDD, and yes it is new. I've been working on computers for 29 years, and for the past 7 years 90% has been laptop work. The old hard drive failed for reasons presently unknown, but it's been my experience that hard drives last from 3 - 5 years (with rare exceptions), and IDE drives seem to last longer than SATA drives. Since the hard drive and laptop are working perfectly, I have no reason to believe there is a problem with the hard drive. I have examined the Windows Event System Log, and the system is operating with zero errors.

I assumed that since the disk was not being seen by Knoppix, that it must be seeing it as a PCI device. Technically, a hard drive is a peripheral device as it is not permanently attached to the motherboard and does not operate on the System Bus. Since I'm not intimately familiar with Linux, I thought the error was referring to the hard disk drive. When I get the laptop back up and running in Knoppix, I'll run the "lspci" command you mentioned and report back on the results. I'll also try to boot from sdb1 to see if it will speed up the process.

I appreciate all of your comments and apologize for my ignorance regarding Linux and Knoppix. My programming experience was 28 years ago, and we all know what languages were available in the 80's. I taught BASIC for Central Texas College in 1985, and have some Assembly, Cobol, and Fortran background, but too long ago to remember. By the time they made it to C and C++, I was too busy managing software installations to keep up. These days I'm repairing computers as an added retirement income, but I decided that I wanted to take the dive into Linux, mostly for diagnostic purposes. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Thanks again for all of your help friends. I'll keep this thread up to date as I continue to progress through this new found obsession.

High Desert Charlie