How do change permissions on my external HD once and for all?

It seems that you’ve been accessing the drive through a Windows machine with an admin account and alternate somewhat with your Linux machine. Am I right? (prays)

I guess you could add the drive to your fstab with the appropriate permissions.

Alternatively, you could always crack open a command line and ‘sudo nautilus’ (assuming Ubuntu + GNOME) then navigate to it. This is not a permanent solution, however.

Doubly alternatively, you could have originally created the volume with a Linux root account and would need to chmod/chown the volume. In fact, I suspect that a permanent solution will involve one or both of these commands.

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-214679.html

I also recall that this could be a symptom of aging hard drives. Buying a new one should solve it until that one breaks as well ;-)

Ah.. people, people.. I’m moved @the100thmonkey You’re always so very helpful, mate. I owe you plenty. However I can and whenever, mate!
@Vincentt Good to see you again as well, old one!
Ok, I seemed to have temporarily “solved” the problem. or perhaps just filled in the gap for a handful of hours.
@the100thmonkey I tried the procedure you mentioned via the Terminal. but it didn’t really have much effect. I also checked the forum link you provided. Blank.
I do admit I’m not fully accustomed to the pure simplicity of Linux yet.. let alone the complete informatic language used.. I’m trying hard though.
Guess what I did. Yes, I rebooted (first).
Then when I saw the problem persisted I just unmounted the interested HD and re mounted it. Done.
Do you think being connected to the net could be an additional factor to this issue?
Hmm… I scrutinised the details of all my connected HDs in sysinfo, hardware lister and such other packages. I did find a note indicating that ANOTHER HD has some sort of complications whilst connected.

@Vincentt Might do.. Might do.. fact is I’ve just bought a new 2 terabyte and I’m using that aside. It’s good because it has the switch off-on button.
I must say though.. The HD in question is actually rather young. just about a year old. I have been using it daily though. hmm.

I am perplexed and curious. hungry for knowledge.

Hmm, I don’t think a year-old HD should already experience problems.

Then I guess the filesystem is corrupted. If you have a 2 TB hard drive lying aside, you could try to back up everything from the malfunctioning hard drive, reformat it, and put everything back. If this is your main drive this might mean you also have to reinstall Ubuntu.

@Vincentt Yes.. I figured that might’ve been a good option to consider. Good thing it’s not the main HD containing the OS.
IT does contain loads of other important Items though. I probably forgot to mention that This drive in particular was regularly exposed to and used in windows vista when I had the dual booting OS running.