cant access my external hard drive

Hi:

Do you know how are the partitions in your external HD? could it be formated as NTFS? I guess you are using Ubuntu 7.04.
if so its because the program used to write NTFS is still a bit buggy (it has being fixed in Ubuntu 7.10) so its a dangerous action and only root should be able to do it.
To access the contents, do in a terminal:
sudo nautilus
type your pasword, and then you will have a nautilus with root rights (BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL PLEASE)

Hi Rodrigo,

I am using Kubuntu, and I have not configure much so I
guess there is a lot of "things" on the OS is not
running at is peak.

I am still learning, so anything you might suggest
would be good.

Thx

hawkins

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Hi,

I had the same problem with my second harddisk.
I had to change user rights an the external drive.

I'm not sure but I think you can find it in the /media folder.

command: something like: sudo chmod 777 /.

I'm also still learning so I understand.

Could you please open a terminal (applications-->accessories-->terminal) and paste following lines in it:

uname -a

sudo fdisk -l

cat /etc/mtab

and copy the outputs of all three here.

The icon appeared by itself or you've mounted the disk manually? Is this an usb disk?

yes it is a USB hard disk. By the way, can I copy files into my hard disk after I mount them

Linux hawkins-desktop 2.6.20-15-generic #2 SMP Sun Apr 15 06:17:24 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 19082 153276133+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 19083 19457 3012187+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 19083 19457 3012156 82 Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/sda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
lrm /lib/modules/2.6.20-15-generic/volatile tmpfs rw 0 0
tmpfs /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0

Could you repeat the last two with the disk mounted? Basically i'm trying to discover what disk you have, what device it gets, what partitions and file systems it has, and how is it mounted.

You can also check following guide, just skip all the partitioning steps:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/InstallingANewHardDrive

Most probably you'll have to follow instructions about allowing normal user to modify files in the chapter "Mount the Drive" there. But information i'm asking for would make it easier to find out what's the actual problem.

hawkins@hawkins-desktop:~$ uname -a
Linux hawkins-desktop 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Sun Sep 23 18:31:23 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux
hawkins@hawkins-desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sdf: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 * 1 9729 78148161 7 HPFS/NTFS
hawkins@hawkins-desktop:~$ cat /etc/mtab
/dev/sda1 / ext3 rw,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/sys /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
varrun /var/run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=0755 0 0
varlock /var/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,mode=1777 0 0
procbususb /proc/bus/usb usbfs rw 0 0
udev /dev tmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devshm /dev/shm tmpfs rw 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,gid=5,mode=620 0 0
lrm /lib/modules/2.6.20-16-generic/volatile tmpfs rw 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw 0 0
/dev/sdf1 /media/datadisk ntfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0

Please take a look at my sdf1, that will be the external disk which I am trying to copy files into.

There's a program ntfs-config (in universe repository) which can be used to configure read/write access to ntfs, but i'm not sure it can be used with usb drives.

How do you mount your disk? Try this:
sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdf1 /media/datadisk -o allow_other