for partitions on the same computer, you'll use the 'mount' command as a root user. There are ways to set this up to use it as your normal user, but basically, the command (in a terminal) is:
mount /dev/partitionname /mountdirectory/mountfilename
'man mount' can give you more details if you need them. A common invocation looks like:
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
In this case, you'd need to 'touch /mnt/windows' as root to create the mountfilename before you can use it. As for samba, it's mainly for networked applications, although I've seen people use it when they really FUBAR their system (you can use samba through localhost, but it's otherwise pointless to have the extra step on a local drive).
If you're using a window manager, it might already be setup to allow users to mount other partitions, so if you have a drive icon in the background, right click it and see if there isn't a mount option. Even if there is, you might have a permission problem, until you adjust your fstab, but that's a whole different question.
