"my Computer" And Drive Write Permissions

I have 4 hard drives in my system, and 2 of them is dedicated for storage of my ripped music CDs and backed-up DVDs (I hate putting them, into my Xbox, every time I want to play them, so I store them on my harddrive and stream them over the network).

My problem is that when I enter "My Computer" from the desktop, the drive permissions are set so that only the root user can write to them (root:root), how do I change this to allow myself (<username>:users) to write to them?

What type of file system are those drives?

Originally posted by 69_rs_ss@Dec 23 2004, 02:04
What type of file system are those drives?

All my drives are EXT3, I don't know why it's just my file system of choice

I'm sure someone will dissagree but I prefer reiserfs, it's supposed to be faster for multiple small files.

On to your other problem. If the root user made the folder, then as root you can change ownership with the command "chown" as in:

chown -R regularUser /location/of/folder

The -R switch means recursive, as in every file beneath that location will also have its ownership changed.

Alternately, you can change file permission as root with "chmod" as in:

chmod 740 /location/of/folder

It's best to google for file permissions as there is alot of information and options to choose from.

Thanks sarvinc,
I will try that a little later on, but I have another question, if my system was incorrectly shutdown or I had to use the reset button, what is the command to completely check an EXT3 partition for errors and correct them if any is found.

It still is important we know how the file system is configured. Please post your fstab; that will help.

Where did my post go? Oh my... in a fit of stupidity I think I just replied to the email the board sends me when there is a new post . Of course this only underlines my reply "fsck is the command you're looking for. File systems, disks, and data can be quite complicated and I am not qualified to give you any advice when using fsck."
Posting your /etc/fstab or the output of "fdisk -l" will certainly help confirm that you are indeed using all ext3 filesystems

/dev/sda1 * * * * * */ * * * * * * * * * *ext3 * * * acl,user_xattr * * * *1 1
/dev/sdb1 * * * * * */home * * * * * * * *ext3 * * * acl,user_xattr * * * *1 2
/dev/hda1 * * * * * */media/storage1 * * *ext3 * * * acl,user_xattr * * * *1 2
/dev/hdb1 * * * * * */media/storage2 * * *ext3 * * * acl,user_xattr * * * *1 2
/dev/sda3 * * * * * */usr/local * * * * * ext3 * * * acl,user_xattr * * * *1 2
/dev/sda2 * * * * * *swap * * * * * * * * swap * * * pri=42 * * * * * * * *0 0
devpts * * * * * * * /dev/pts * * * * * * devpts * * mode=0620,gid=5 * * * 0 0
proc * * * * * * * * /proc * * * * * * * *proc * * * defaults * * * * * * *0 0
usbfs * * * * * * * */proc/bus/usb * * * *usbfs * * *noauto * * * * * * * *0 0
sysfs * * * * * * * */sys * * * * * * * * sysfs * * *noauto * * * * * * * *0 0
/dev/cdrecorder * * */media/cdrecorder * *subfs * * *fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/dvdrecorder * * /media/dvdrecorder * subfs * * *fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocharset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 * * * * * * /media/floppy * * * *subfs * * *fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0

I booted up a SUSE 9.2 LiveCD and ran "fsck.ext3 -fv /dev/<sd* & hd*>"

It didn't seem to find any errors, so I hope I'm OK