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When my external HDD mounts, it get mounted with root as owner. So I can only look read files. How do I get this to mount as me as owner?

It's frustrating. Why is it really necessary to have root as the owner. Can't you just have a admin account that get that privilege?

As I have read, there are no way to set fat32/NTFS with owner. So there are no way I can change this. Atleast not that I am aware of.

I hope anyone one here can help me.

Update: It's labeled as vfat, not fat32. Not sure if that is the same thing. Update 2: The screenshot show my language, but I do believe you know what it means. I will add mount shortly.

Screenshot of the owner rights on my vfat external HDD Mount gives the output vfat (rw)

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    In Ubuntu, external HDD partitions mount as user readable and writable by default, not sure what's the source of your info. Also, 'root-permissions' are irrelevant in case of fat32. Add the output of mount to the question, that might help us help you. What version of Ubuntu do you have? – mikewhatever Jul 14 '12 at 22:21
  • I use ubuntu 12.04. I will add the output of mount later today. When I right click on my HDD and choose properties. And choose the tab Rights (I think it's called that in English, it's the second tab). The root is shown as owner. I will make a screenshot to. – user66987 Jul 15 '12 at 11:30
  • mount your drive. It will show in /media/drivename. Now change the permission: sudo chmod -R 777 /media/drivename – shantanu Jul 15 '12 at 12:42
  • I have tried to change owner with chmod earlier, but I gave it a try again. Root is still the owner. And when I try to change 777 to my username, I get "chmod: invalid mode" followed by my username. The strange thing is, when I use 777 I do not get invalid mode, but the owner is still root. – user66987 Jul 15 '12 at 12:59
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I have solved it. I used the guide mount guide

Ok. Here is the steps I used.

  1. Unmount drive. Used this command in terminal sudo umount /media/your disk.
  2. I checked the partition table to see what path it was on with this command sudo fdisk -l in terminal.
  3. I created a mount point sudo mkdir /fat. Just called it fat.
  4. Then I created a backup of my fstab file using the command sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup.
  5. Then I opened fstab with this command sudo nano /etc/fstab.
  6. Then I added this to my vfat HDD iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0

And voila, when I mounted the HDD again I was the owner and not root :)`

The site I added also explains how to do this for NTFS HDD's too.

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  • Please edit your answer to tell us specifically what you did to fix the problem--that's better than a web reference that might go away some day. Please leave the reference in your answer, though. Helpful sites deserve links (and credit). – John S Gruber Jul 15 '12 at 15:47
  • Great! Thanks for documenting what worked for you. – John S Gruber Jul 15 '12 at 20:16
  • user66987 you are a legend, many thanks this also solved my issue. – Huw May 8 '14 at 20:36

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