"Works" does not mean "works out of the box". Maybe it is necessary to re-compile kernel with corresponding modules (i.e. for disk-controller). That might be the case, because as you wrote, 10.1 live-cd does not detect partitions either. You can try to load 10.2 (or any newer which detects those /dev/sda* partitions) and compare "lsmod" output with 10.1. Then you will find which module is missing...
And concerning that read-only partition, try to remount it with "mount -o remount,rw /dev/path /mount/path"