changing external hard drive permissions

[stripe]

hi all
I am having the following problem with mint 12 (lisa)
when I try to copy/backup any files to an external hard drive (usb2) I am told that I don not have permission to write to the drive, it reads and lets me copy files from the external hard drive, just wont let me write or delete anything from it

as I have nearly 160GB of data in my encrypted home folder makes using dvds or memory sticks as backups impractical, I hope that someone can tell me how to alter the permissions of the hard drive

cheers

Stripe

[chipbuster]

What format is the HDD in?

[kyphi]

Use the "chown" and "chmod" commands to change the owner and the permissions:

Code: Select all

sudo chown yourname:yourname -R /media/nameofdrive

Code: Select all

sudo chmod -R 777 /media/nameofdrive

You can find the name of your drive in /media when you plug in your drive.

[stripe]

hi chipbuster

the externel hard drive has a EXT4 filesystem

cheers
stripe

edited to add

thanks kyphi will go and try that now