Ubuntu 11.10 doesnt want to recognise my Seagate portable harddrive for some reason. It worked fine with other versions of ubuntu.

Welcome in the club!
Could you run command lsusb
Plug disk and wait a few seconds.
Then run again command lsusb
If you get a new line, please post it and check in /media if disk is present (sometimes disk is present but not displayed with an icon).
As issue could be linked to kernel, at boot could you select an old kernel like 2.6.xx (third line in boot menu).

And please raise a bug, so a programmer will have a look at it. There is too much issues since delivery of Oneiric.

If you do raise a bug, please make sure to read https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs carefully first. You might want to wait to report a bug until some discussion has occurred here, as the information gleaned may be helpful in figuring out what package to report the bug against and what information to include in your bug report. However, you can always edit a bug report after submitting it, so if you wish to report a bug now, please certainly feel free to do so (after reading https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs).

Please provide the information delance has requested first, in case he knows something that may be able to help you. Then please separately provide this information:

What is the specific model of the Seagate portable hard drive?

Was the last removal of the hard drive from a computer safe? (That is, was it properly unmounted, ejected, "removed safely" or whatever the operating system on which you were using the drive calls it.)

Also, with the hard drive not connected, please open a Terminal window and run this command:

dmesg|tail;echo;sudo lshw -C disk;echo;sudo fdisk -l; echo; sudo parted -l;echo;mount;echo;df -h

(You should copy that command from https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+question/178163 so that it pastes into the Terminal correctly.)

You may be prompted for your password. As you enter it, you won't see any placeholder characters (like *)--that's OK, just type it in and press enter.

Then plug the drive into the computer (make sure the drive is connected to power and that it is switched on if it has a power switch), wait 10 seconds, and run that command again (you can press the up arrow key to bring the command back up).

Then select all the text in the Terminal (Edit > Select All), copy it to the clipboard (Edit > Copy), and paste it here.

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04f2:b070 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 2.0 multicard reader

** Then i typed lsusb **

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04f2:b070 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bda:0158 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. USB 2.0 multicard reader
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0bc2:5021 Seagate RSS LLC FreeAgent GoFlex 9ZFAD1-500 1.5 TB

The command recognized my Seagate Hdd, however i went to the /media folder, and all that was showing up was my CD-ROM drive

With regards to the other command (dmesg|tail;echo;sudo lshw -C disk;echo;sudo fdisk -l; echo; sudo parted -l;echo;mount;echo;df -h), It recognized that my HDD was plugged in.

*-disk
       description: SCSI Disk
       product: FreeAgent GoFlex
       vendor: Seagate
       physical id: 0.0.0
       bus info: scsi@10:0.0.0
       logical name: /dev/sdc
       version: 0148
       serial: NA0DJJGH
       size: 465GiB (500GB)
       capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
       configuration: ansiversion=4 signature=000c9358

Model: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ntfs

However, I have just noticed this message that was also there. It sais : "Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0 has been opened read-only. Error: Cannot have a partition outside the disk!"

I will hold off on the bug reporting for a little bit in case someone can answer this using the information I have provided. I will be more then happy to launch a bug report if needed. Thankyou for your help thus far!

With the external hard drive plugged in, run "sudo parted -l" or "sudo fdisk -l" to verify that /dev/sdc1 is still the device name. Then run:

udisks --mount /dev/sdc1

What happens? Is there an error message? Is the device mounted and rendered usable?

And do you know if the last removal of the hard drive from a computer was safe? (That is, was it properly unmounted, ejected, "removed safely" or whatever the operating system on which you were using the drive calls it.)

I ran "sudo parted -l" and this is the output it gave me:

Model: ATA TOSHIBA MK4058GS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 400GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 397GB 397GB primary ext4 boot
 2 397GB 400GB 3082MB extended
 5 397GB 400GB 3082MB logical linux-swap(v1)

Model: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ntfs

Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0
has been opened read-only.
Error: Cannot have a partition outside the disk!

I am EXTREMELY new to linux so pardon me if this sounds like a very stupid question, but this is telling me that the device name is sdc correct? and not sdc1? Would i need to then type udisks --mount /dev/sdc ?

Oh sorry I forgot to mention, this is the error message that came up when i typed the udisks command:

"Mount failed: Error mounting: mount: you must specify the filesystem type"

And once again because I keep forgetting to address all your questions at once.. the drive as properly unmounted. I was a Windows user, so I just used to perform the standard safe removal

The device to mount is the partition, /dev/sdc1. /dev/sdc is the drive, not the partition, and cannot be mounted. (Actually, you may be able to forcibly mount the drive as though it were a partition. But that would have bad results...)

"Mount failed: Error mounting: mount: you must specify the filesystem type"

That sounds like you tried "udisks --mount /dev/sdc". If so, try "udisks --mount /dev/sdc1". If the drive has been disconnected and reconnected or the machine has been hibernated or rebooted (or potentially even suspended), then since the drive is not mounted, you should run "sudo fdisk -l" or "sudo parted -l" first to verify that /dev/sdc1 is still the correct device name.

When I typed the 'sudo parted -l' and 'sudo fdisk -l' it did find my external Hdd:

Model: Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
 1 1049kB 500GB 500GB primary ntfs

I typed udisks --mount /dev/sdc1 and i got the same error message:

"Mount failed: Error mounting: mount: you must specify the filesystem type"

It seems likely that the filesystem has become corrupted. Since it's an NTFS filesystem, the best way to scan for and fix errors is with the chkdsk utility on Windows. Do you have a Windows system on which you can do this?

UBUNTU does not see any of my USB drives/camera SD cards.
WINDOWS XP SP2 sees them all no problem