So, I have my account on Mint as "administrator" type, and when I tried to access files on an external drive, it said that I did not have permission to access or view the files.

I unplugged the drive, and plugged it back in, and when it popped up at the bottom of the screen, I could access the files.

What's going on?

Also, how do I stop the pop-up notifications of a 'new device/drive detected' from coming up?

Thanks,
matt

It is likely that the first time the drive was mounted, it was owned by root. The next time, it was owned by user. Note that I'm just guessing here, but I have seen such behavior in the past.

The only way to make sure is to look at the permissions when and if it happens again. If you can view it from the command line, use the ls -l command--it will show you the permissions in column one. That's the most reliable method. See man ls for more.

Alternatively, you can open your file manager, right-click on the drive icon, and select "Permissions" from the pop-up dialog. (Depending on the file manager, you may have to hunt a bit to find the "permissions" dialog.)

Whether or not you can disable the pop-ups depends on the file manager and desktop environment you are using. Provide that information and we may be able to help you.

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Log to Root Account to be able to view
files

Being Administrator is Ubuntu's equivalent to being a member of group wheel AFAIK. In other words, you can use sudo to run commands as root, not that you always have root power.

Was the external drive connected before booting the computer? I think it was mounted before a regular user had a session, so it was mounted as root. As it worked after plugging it in, it sounds like your policy kit permissions are OK.

udev/console kit/policy kit and the desktop work together in an attempt to make it easier for you. Doing away with the notifications, you may need to create a mount point somewhere else for the device (i.e. not in /media ) such as /mnt/drive, and create an entry in /etc/fstab allowing you to mount it yourself. In other words, old school. You may find the notifications to be worth the convenience.

yea, I can probably tolerate the notifications- they just come up every time I boot the computer and it's a minor hassle. I'd like to be able to just have the external HDDs connected 'seamlessly' (they hold my files, my ancient 40gig HDD has the OS and programs... currently it's partitioned for 10gb for the OS, 29gb for data (/home), and 1gb for "RAM"... forgot what it's technically called though...) If I were to connect, say, a usb drive or other device, a notification asking me what to do would be great.

As for the version of Mint I'm running, it's Lisa, or version 12