How do I set read/write permissions my hard drives?

Question

I've recently installed Ubuntu 11.10 on my laptop, but I can't do anything with my 1.5TB external drive, and my 500GB because I don't have write permission. Are there any specific commands I can use in the terminal to set the read/write permissions?

The external is NTFS, and the 500GB is ext4.

Answer 1

if you don't mind the security problems you can do a recursive chmod in order to change the permissions of all the files.

cd /media/your_external_drive
sudo chmod -R 777 *

Also if your files were created in another OS like windows they will have different ownership you can do the same as above to change the ownership of the files

cd /media/your_external_drive
sudo chown -R your_username:your_username *

Thats the way I solved a similar problem for my friend after migrating from windows and also after migrating from Linux Mint to Ubuntu.

Answer 2

to fix read/write issue ntfs

just install these packages

sudo apt-get install ntfs-config ntfs-3g

when install run in the dash the ntfs-config give your password when prompted
and in joy read/write support for ntfs

Answer 3

I was having a hard time solving the problem and this solution worked for me

1. install physical storage device manger:

   sudo apt-get install pysdm 
   

2. Open storage device manger:

   sudo pysdm 
   

3. Choose your required drives

4. Press assist
5. Uncheck open as read only
6. Check owner user of file system and write your username
7. Press ok and apply
8. Remount the drive

Note: if you can't change files to binary executables, go to special files and check permit execution of files as binaries, and go to step 7

Answer 4

for your 500 GB hard-drive (ext4) filesystem, you need to give the write and execute permission on / partition:-

sudo chmod ugo+wx /

Brief Explanation:-

sudo :- it will elevate your priviledges to execute the command.

chmod:- command to change the permissions

u :- user

g:- group

o :- other

/ :- partition

For your NTFS partition please follow fossfreedom's advice.

Hope this is helpful.