Accessing Hard Drives

Point of clarification, the partition and folders in which Ubunto is installed is accessible, it's everything else that's the problem :-)

Please execute the following commands and copy-paste the output here.

This command generates a list of all partitions on your system:
sudo fdisk -l

This command generates a list of partitions that are mounted:
mount

Finally, the contents of fstab gives information about which filesytems have been set up on your computer
cat /etc/fstab

Here it is .......................................... thanks for the help:

$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 12327 99016596 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2 12328 18369 48532365 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 18370 24321 47809440 83 Linux
/dev/hda5 12328 18181 47022223+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 18182 18369 1510078+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hdb: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 15405 123740631 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb2 15406 30515 121371075 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 15406 30515 121371043+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sda: 512 MB, 512753664 bytes
56 heads, 32 sectors/track, 558 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1792 * 512 = 917504 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 559 500592 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(838, 55, 32) logical=(558, 39, 32)

~$ mount

/dev/hda3 on / type ext3 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
/sys on /sys type sysfs (rw)
varrun on /var/run type tmpfs (rw)
varlock on /var/lock type tmpfs (rw)
procbususb on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw)
udev on /dev type tmpfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
devshm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
lrm on /lib/modules/2.6.15-27-386/volatile type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/sda1 on /media/IMATION type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,quiet,shortname=mixed,uid=1000,gid=1000,umask=077,iocharset=utf8)

:~$ cat /etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

By coincidence it looks like ticket 2039 was exactly the same issue as I'm having.

Sorry for the delay in replying. What exactly happens when you try to mount for example hda1 manually?

First create a folder, then mount:

$sudo mkdir /media/test
$sudo mount /dev/hda1 /media/test

I have an identical problem... I have followed the instructions given above and for the last instruction:

$sudo mkdir /media/test
$sudo mount /dev/hda1 /media/test

I recieved this:

mkdir: cannot create directory `/media/test': Permission denied
mount: only root can do that