well after running linux on just my labtop and finding it very usefull i decided to install it onto my dekstop in a dual boot situation... however i found when i created a user that user is not able to view my external hard drive only logged in as root can i view it. the drive it self is ntfs and i have read that there are some issues with this file system running on linux, how would i go about making it so a regular user can view the files on the drive.

another question i use minicom to configure my routers and such but when i try to run the program as anything but root i get permission denied statements... not sure how to fix. any help would be much appreciated

As far as I know the support for ntfs is very poor. You'll just have to keep using the root account.

You need to edit the fstab entry for the drive. umask=0000 will allow any user to access that drive.

It should look something like this:

/dev/hda2 /windows ntfs user,umask=0000 1 0

The mount options that you can use to mount an ntfs filesystem are given in the "man mount" manpage.

*smacks head on table*... i was using the manuel for another issue and i spaced using it on this one... thank you for the advice from everyone. Next time i will try to let common sense overcome sleep deprevation and fustration.