OK im not a newb but having problems with permissions:
Logged in as root and set permissions for user, relogged as user and can read but not write to external drive.
As root I made all changes in system/admin/authorizations and made changes in users and groups.....what am I missing?
Using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala

Is your drive format in ntfs?
You may need the nfts-3g driver

What's the filesystem and how exactly do you mount it?
What about the ownership of the files/directories?

The file system is FAT32 all was fine until I had an audio problem and removed PULSE Audio.
For some reason the uninstaller removed my gnome desktop and set me to "user".
I recovered the desktop and audio but can't seem to get permissions right
system will not mount cd or usb drives
I logged in as root and made changes to system/Administration/Authorizations

I then checked etc/fstab..but not sure what to look for here.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=f246a06b-f90a-4e05-98e5-97355ab51cc6 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=54416246-4366-437a-a8f8-b0d6f5fe176f none swap users,sw,user 0 0
# /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
# /dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
# acl /.Reboot
# /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 vfat defaults 0 0

That's why I stay away from so-called 'user-friendly' package managers that 'know better' what I want.

Have you just pasted it like that from your editor or is your fstab all commented out?

Try to add the option: umask=000 to your vfat entry in fstab.

I just pasted it from my editor.
I added the umask=000 to my vfat entry in fstab, still no change

You know that this "#" before the line: tell fstab not to read that line.
If you have # before that line remove it and it should work.
Sorry for mad bad english.