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Using precise pangolin. I am trying to copy some folders from my portable hard drive to one of the partitions. The paste button is not working in the destination folder and whenever I am trying a drag-drop with my mouse, it says that I don't have permission to create there, albeit I have the root. Even the new folder button is not working. Help please. Dialogue box and Permission details attached.

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You may want to have a look at these questions: askubuntu.com/questions/47538/…, and e.g. askubuntu.com/questions/77655/… (and more) in case your partition is NTFS. – Takkat Sep 29 '12 at 8:06

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Open a terminal and type

gksudo nautilus

A new nautilus browsing window will appear. Use it to copy and post the results.

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sudo nautilus is a bad idea, gksu nautilus is best. – Tom Brossman Sep 29 '12 at 8:39
Hi, I thought gksu is for graphical applications and since nautilus is a file manager, we can open it with sudo. – linuxandunix Sep 29 '12 at 9:32
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Nautilus is a graphical application. It involves the use of X, and it displays quite a few icons. Do you mind if I change it to gksudo? – ObsessiveSSOℲ Sep 30 '12 at 22:07
1  
I agree with @ObsessiveFOSS , 'gksudo' will be more appropriate. – linuxandunix Oct 1 '12 at 3:37
up vote 1 down vote

I think I get your problem. Lets assume your destination folder is /home/user/MOVIES

If you are using your root account (Not recommend it) do the follwing

 chmod 777 /home/user/MOVIES  (You give all the permissions to your folder)
 cp /media/HARDDISK/ /home/user/MOVIES -R (You are copying all the content of your harddisk to you MOVIES folder)  
 if you have a special folder just specify it /media/HARDDISK/SPECIALFOLDER -R means recursive, you are going to copy what is on that folder)

If you check your destination folder only has access permissions, you can't write on it.

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