I have a total of 4 HDDs plus a boot drive(SSD). For the time being, due to the design of the MSI P67A-G45 mobo, I can not access all my SATA ports as my GPU is blocking them. Because of this design flaw, I need to hotswap my HDDs from time to time. It seems that they auto mount fine but the problem is I do not have permission to access. How can I resolve this?

Are you running 2 x video cards (crossfire, SLI or for some other reason)?

The SATA slots could be blocked by a video card in the PCIe x8 slot, but even then it should be possible to use them. If its a single video card, it should be run in the PCIe x16 slot.

If you arent running 2 x video cards, or some other large card in PCIe x8 slot, the SATA ports should be totally clear.

If I say my SATA ports are blocked, should it rally matter why? I don;t mean to sound rude or ungrateful but I cam here asking for a solution to my problem, not to be educated about my PCI-E ports or how my rig is set up. If you must know, the video card always causes a short in the x16 slot, so after days of troubleshooting it, I finally gave up, and threw it in the x8 slot. As I understand it, the x8 slot really is not holding back an ATI HD4890, but then again if it is, the little gaming I do, doesn't really put a dent in the cards capabilities.

Video cards aside, I would love to know how I can get my drives to cooperate with debian like they did in Windows.

You may be able to solve the problem by writing a custom udev rule to automount and assign access permissions in one stroke.

Hey bigrigdriver, thanks for that tip, but you realize your in the Newbie forum here right? Could you be a bit more specific, give me an example to work from or a tutorial?

Maybe if you as root add the user to the disk group username is the name of the user you want to add.

-G is an invalig option. Do you mean -g(use GID for the new group)?

yes -g

Thanks, but disk is not a valid group apparently. Did I miss something? Was disk supposed to be an example variable for another group?

sorry to add a existing user to a group

You are offened by my suggestion that your SATA ports shouldnt be blocked? I see lots of people using MSI P67A-G45 + HD 4890 setups online, and I cant find anything about your problem (and I dont even sure what you mean by 'shorting').

Quite often I see solutuions that are at best workarounds. Sometimes people find workarounds for windows, then try to pull the same trick with linux...and quite often its a real PITA, and a 'bad' setup anyway. This is another one. I dont see any problems with telling people there should be another way. If you choose to try something else, that is up to you.

You might be able to use at least one of the 'blocked' ports with a 90degree SATA data cable. Which would give you 5 active ports, fixing the problem without the hassle of hotswapping....

Offended? Hardly I just didn't want to bother going down that road simply because I know my hardware and how it works. That and I wanted to avoid this drawn out explanation. Yes using the 8x slot may be a work around, but after 2 defective mobos in a row, and a month of dealing with returns to Newegg, I got a fully working mobo. The 16x slot actually works fine when the mobo is used outside the case, but when inside the case the gpu causes a short that makes the system go in to a bootloop. The case , a Mozart Tx was used with a P45 mobo and the same 4890 gpu prior to the upgrade. So after days of troubleshooting to find the short, I gave up as I just want a working computer after a month of down time.

As per your solution, you forgot to factor in an optical drive. No I didnt mention it but it should only be assumed it is there in 99% of cases so I still have to hotswap. I actually have a cheap PCI RAID card that worked,although it caused it's own share of problems, in Win 7 untill I decided to do a clean install of Win 7 since I had done almost a complete hardware overhaull and then it prevented windows from booting. I may try the cheapo PCI card again but do not have alot of faith in it working but who knows.

The hotswapping issue is resolved either way. I switched to kubuntu and hotswapping works out of the box! Thanks to those who tried to contribute a working solution.

If soemone says '4 x HDDs + 1 x SSD' I assume thats what they want to run. Not everybody has a optical drive, I know of people that havent had a CD/DVD drive installed for years.

Doesnt that tell you that there is a serious issue? Probably a misplaced standoff, connecting to the pinouts for PCIe x16 slot. You may not want to try to fix it with all the problems you have had...still, its IMO a perfect example of a 'solution that is at best a workaround' for a 'bad setup'.

Gotta love it when people have nothing better to do then troll old dead threads to criticize people for using a temporary "workaround."

Not everyone has an optical drive? I guess thats why I said 99%..although I should have probably said 90-95% of desktops, but it really doesn't matter in regards to the point of the thread.

As for standoffs, 6 standoffs, and 6 screws inserted in to them with the mobo lined up perfectly. The pinouts are fine as far as I can see. Like I said, the system boots fine using the x16 slot outside the case. Trust me when I say I have throughly examined the situation.

Oh well, it will get fixed one of these days but excuse me for having more pressing matters then digging up old threads on an Internet forum to criticize people for having higher priorities in life then dealing with a short in their pc case. Oh well, take care and thanks for all the useful advice, oh wait..anyways I will be unsubscribing now. Thanks for the morning laugh though.

Anyways, since the topic is brought up again, thanks to those that took the time to help me find a real solution.

Troll old threads? Its a few days old, and I didnt reply before because I was busy (and there was a minor database error last night anyway).

If I wanted to troll, I would have said what I was thinking rather than being nice about it......