Look in the Gnome menu for a gnome configuration utility. I think the actual program that runs is gconf. There is a graphical tree diagram that includes drives. I think you can modify the mounting policy there.
If your system uses PolicyKit, then you can edit the policy for mounting removable drives. I'm not at my computer now so I can't look for myself. There is a tag <active>...</active> in the policy that may say something like "admin auth" which you can change to simply "Yes". There should be other entries in the same file that you can use as a model. Using the Gnome configuration tool would be simpler and will probably edit the same config files correctly.
Also look at the "polkit-auth" or "polkit-gnome-authorization" if these tools exist. It would be better to use a tool instead of directly editing the policy file.
I think that the properties dialog you did try does have a place to enter mount options. Adding `fmask=0111,dmask=0000' may allow you to read and write even though the ownership is root, by changine the permissions for "others".
You could at least locate the policy file that sets the removable disk policy and enter the exact filename in a google search with "gnome" and/or your distro. If you find this policy file on the net, compare the one on the net with yours.
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If the drive is mounted and used device /dev/sdb1 for example, use udevinfo to gather information such as the UUID and LABEL of the filesystem. That can uniquely identify that drives filesystem, which you can use in a mount entry in fstab. The reason to do this is to be able to manually mount the drive even if the system uses a different device node (like /dev/sdc1) the next time you plug it in. You can use the "user" mount option which along with the "uid=<yourusername>,gid=<yourgroupname>" and the UUID number which uniquely identifies the drive will allow you to mount it as a regular user.
The udevinfo command for a drive using /dev/sdb1 is:
udevinfo -q env -n /dev/sdb1
Copy the UUID=<uuid identifier> from the output. Use it for your /etc/fstab entry in place of the device field entry.
Example /etc/fstab entry. Between the angle brackets are variables you need to replace:
Code:
UUID=<uuid entry> /mnt/disk ntfs-3g rw,noauto,uid=<yourusername>,gid=<yourgroup>,fmask=0117,dmask=0007,utf8 0 0
Look in your man mount.ntfs man page. It may prefer you use file_mode= and dir_mode= in place of fmask and dmask. Look when you mount the drive. If it doesn't complain, then don't worry about it. Even if it does complain, it should still work.
Also enter "mount | grep ntfs" after automounting the disk. Use the mount options listed as a model of the mount options you want to use and just make changes to your /etc/fstab. I would base manually mounted drives under /mnt/ instead of /media. /media is meant for automounted partitions, and the HAL daemon tools will add and remove directories there. It's best not to interfere with this process.
AFAIK, it is OK if the system automounts the drive under /media and you mount it under /mnt/. For SuSE, however, HAL will refuse to mount a filesystem that exists in /etc/fstab. Let me repeat that if you add an /etc/fstab entry for an external drive, make sure you use the "noauto" mount option. You may not be able to boot up otherwise, if it isn't plugged in.
