ok, why can i not mount unless i am root?
why can i not access the stuff i mounted as root if i'm not root?

ok, why can i not mount unless i am root?
Because as default, mount use permissions defined in fstab for mount point. If in fstab, the mount point has 'owner' option, only the owner (in general, root) of the concerning device file will be able to mount it. To change this permission you can replace 'owner' by 'user' in your fstab so all users will have access to mount point.

why can i not access the stuff i mounted as root if i'm not root?
Because the permissions are too restrictives (do ls -l the mount point)

To follow up on keefaz's excellent advice, I always changes the fstab entries for CDs, Floppies, and DVDs to "users" instead of "user". You may not see any difference at all, but I believe that it may make things simpler for you. An example:

User "John" starts up X, mounts a CD, and leaves. User "Bob" comes along to use the computer. He logs "John" out of X and logs himself in. He goes to eject the CD, but can't because it is mounted. He goes to unmount it, but can't because he is not the "user" who mounted it. Fortunately, though, this doesn't ever happen, because the fstab entry is "users", and "Bob" is one of the "users". Hope that makes sense.

try sudo utilities.

/etc/sudoers

heres a good example

%power ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/standby,/usr/sbin/hibernate,/usr/sbin/suspend
this permits group power to standby, hibernate and suspend (scripts of my own)

right, more pressing prob. HOW do i make the drive RW not RO? at boot is says that it won't mount RW coz it is a win2k+ drive. I NEED to right to the drive as windows has ****ed up the file system and i need to restore a file to get it to boot.

download captive, for fat fat32 and ntfs writting if your kernel doesn't support it

1st, what type is your drive?
2nd check up /etc/fstab

types for windows:
fat (16), fat12 (dos), fat32, skinny (LOL!), ntfs (winXP, New Technology FileSystem)

NTFS XP

download captive then
you'll need to umount it, then REmount it like this
mount -t captive-ntfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/windows

replace /dev/hda2 with windows2k partition and captive-ntfs with whatever name it was given last release.

Then take a DEEP breath, take your calm and attempt to write,
male backups to be on the safe side

ok, have got cand installed captive...

eh? it sez it is alredy mounted. how do i un-mount it?

su
umount /mnt/windows