i added a partition which is fat32. apparently the user has only read access to this partition. only root can write. how can i make user have write access as well? here is the line from the /etc/fstab:
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/hdb5 vfat noauto,users,exec,umask=1000,gid=1000,uid=1000

also i tried umask=
1000
000
004
002
007
022
002
none of the above gave me write access as user. any ideas?

fstab entry

/dev/hda5 /mnt/hda5 vfat umask=000,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,users 0 0

works for me. I suspect you don't even need the iocharset & codepage entries.
The 'noauto' option means the drive will not automount at boot, you will have to manually mount it. If that is what you want & you are manually mounting anyway, 'mount -rw /dev/hda5' should do the trick.
'Umask 000' entry & 'users' entry should give read/write permissions to everybody who is a member of the groups 'users'. Check that your username is a member of group 'users'.