Accessing internal disks of the computer has security implications:

  • You can leave traces of your activities in Tails 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 de-anonymize you.

To access internal hard disks:

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

  2. Open the Files browser.

  3. Click on the hard disk of your choice in the left pane.

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 properly.

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