I want to carry a USB stick with me to sync my files between multiple PC's that have LMDE Xfce on them.

I used GParted to format the entire space as ext4, primary. I then copied some files from the /home folder on my PC to the USB stick.

Now I can't even open the files unless I open the USB stick as "root", I can't copy them to my /home folder unless I also open my /home folder as root, and once they're copied, I can't access them unless I open the /home folder as root to view them. (The specific error I am getting is "You do not have the permissions necessary to open the file"

Unfortunately, I can't just start over with setting up the USB stick "correctly", because I am already in a situation where I need to restore some files from the USB stick to my PC.

First Question: How can I recover my files from my USB stick and make them accessible on my PC again without logging in as root each time I need to view or edit them?

Second Question: What is the correct way to set up a USB stick for simple transfer of files between two linux boxes?

My friend showed me what to do for the First Question...

Open USB as root
Open terminal there (as root)
Type
and hit enter

Done.

For the Second Question, it would seem ext4 wasn't really designed to work like that & one should just use ntfs.