My 2nd hd was originally ntfs and I could not write to it in linux so I repartitioned it to half ntfs and half ext3 now only root has complete read write access to the ext3 partition. I can access it to read as my user BUT not to write..I tried adding umask=0222 to fstab but then as a user it wont even mount it gives me the error too many mounted file systems..what do I need to do to give my user complete read write access??

add user to the permissions, and mount it as a user.

did that but its still mounting the drive as read only for user??? even for folders on the drive that user created

add to the options rw. Also try chmod the files and directories to what ever permissions you want i.e.

chmod -R 766 /mnt/thedisk/

The problem is your UMASK Value!!

The umask option in mount tells which Bits should *NOT* be set => Inverse Logic.

So umask=0222 means do *not* set the write acess bit for Owner/Group/Other.

In other words: With umask=0222 *no one* is allowed to write.

Try umask =0000 (Allow write access to anyone).

The best would be:

Group all users allowed to access the partition in one group (e.g. users) and then

gid=users umask=0002

So owner and Group members can read/write and others not write

or you may use
gid= users umask=0007

Others can not access the partition at all.