Accessing the internal hard disk

Accessing internal disks of the computer has security implications:

  • You can leave traces of your Tails activities on the hard disks.
  • If Tails is compromised, a malware could install itself on your usual operating system.
  • If an application in Tails is compromised, it could access private data on your disks and use it to deanonymize you.

To access internal hard disks:

  1. When starting Tails, set up an administration password.

  2. Choose Apps ▸ Utilities ▸ Disks to open the Disks utility.

  3. In the left pane of the Disks utility, select the storage device that corresponds to your internal hard disk.

    Verify its brand and size.

  4. In the right pane is displayed a schema of the partitions on your internal hard disk.

  5. Select the partition of your internal hard disk that you want to access.

  6. In the Authentication Required dialog, enter your administration password.

  7. Select the Mount selected partition button to mount the partition.

  8. Select the /media/amnesia/ link to open the volume in the Files browser.

If your usual operating system is in hibernation, accessing it might corrupt your file system. Only access your disk if your system was shut down entirely.

If you have a GNU/Linux system on your disks, you can only access files owned by the first user (with UID 1000) on that system.

In all cases, you might encounter permissions problems. To bypass permission limitations, you can run the Files browser with administration rights.