Change Ownership of External Hard Drive?

[Susie]

I'm very new to Kubuntu, and I have a dual boot setup. My external hard drive works and I can read everything on it. My problem is that I can't save anything to it. The owner is set to root. I have tried using Konsole to change ownership, and it said ownership was changed but it wasn't. The drive is not in media, or in home. When I open Dolphin my hard drive is in root. Konsole also says it is a read-only file system, so I don't know if I need to change ownership or change the read-only status. I need step-by-step instructions if possible. Thanks in advance.

Never mind. Windows was causing the problem. It refused to shutdown completely no matter what I did. I just solved the problem. For those with the same problem, here's how to fix it. Unmount then unplug the external hard drive. Use a partition manager to delete the Windows partitions (there are always at least 2), then create a new partition that Kubuntu can use. Plug the external hard drive back in and let the system mount it, or mount it manually if you don't have automount turned on. Problem solved! I can now edit, delete, and save all files on the external hard drive.

[oshunluvr]

My understanding is if windows is allowed to hibernate rather than shut down, it will make partitions read-only. If the file system in question is ntfs, it doesn't support ownership so that wasn't the issue.

You said "the drive wasn't in media or home..." as it shouldn't be until you mount it. If you open the drive with Dolphin, Dolphin will mount it in /media/<YOUR USERNAME> unless you have defined it in fstab.

[jlittle]

... external hard drive works and I can read ... I can't save anything to it. The owner is set to root.

With NTFS and FAT file systems the owner of the files and the access are usually^* set at mount time. Usually, when an external device is plugged in it gets mounted in /media/$USER with the ownership of the user; I wonder how it's been mounted.

If you used a command to mount it, could you tell us what command?

If it is mounted using /etc/fstab, could you tell us the entry for it? That can be not a good idea for removable media.

Maybe check system settings, Hardware - removable storage, removable devices, and make sure "Enable automatic mounting..." and "Automatically mount removable media..." are checked.

I've read that you nuked the windows file systems (IMO a good option) to solve the problem, but you may run into it again.

^* There is a mechanism to map Linux user ids to NTFS ownerships, called "user mapping". I've never used it, nor heard of anyone using it.

[Susie]

Windows 10 has now become impossible to shut down completely. The latest updates have removed the options of using the console to force a complete shutdown, and unchecking the box to prevent fast startup no longer causes a complete shutdown. Now the only shutdown Windows 10 will do is a hibernation type shutdown which leaves some things running. It's been broken since the updates from December which randomly make the screen go blank, but these latest updates have screwed the pooch. After completely removing all traces of Windows 10 from my computer all problems have been solved. It even fixed other problems I thought were caused by my graphics card and built-in speakers.

Thank you for your help.

[oshunluvr]

Yes. Computers, much like air conditioners, don't work well with Windows open...