It might be because you do not have the permissions to use those partitions.

• To take ownership of a drive or partition (internal and external), simply run the following command:

  
  
  

  sudo chown -R username:username /partition/mount-point
  
  

  
  
  

  Where username is your actual username, mount-point is the directory in the file system to which the partition will be mounted and not the device name (eg: /dev/sda1).




• To determine the mount-point, run mount in the terminal, and locate the line that corresponds to the drive or partition.

  
  
  
  
  

  • If you have not set a label for the partition, it will look something like this:

    
    
    

    /dev/sda5 on /media/7e3fbc57-03fe-4742-bb72-756f31852059
    
    

  
  

  • If you have set the label with something descriptive, it should look like this:

    
    
    

    /dev/sda5 on /media/data
    
    

  
  
  
  
  

  Based on the example, the mount-point will be something like /media/7e3fbc57-03fe-4742-bb72-756f31852059 OR /media/data.

  
  
  

  Now, all you need to do now is run the command below with your username and the correct mount-point:

  
  
  

  sudo chown -R peachy:peachy /media/7e3fbc57-03fe-4742-bb72-756f31852059
  
  

  
  
  

  OR

  
  
  

  sudo chown -R peachy:peachy /media/data
  
  

  
  
  

  Note: Your username and mount-point will be different. Also, if you have set a label that contains spaces (e.g. 1TB External or My Files), you will need to enclose the entire mount-point path in single quotes, such as:

  
  
  

  sudo chown -R peachy:peachy '/media/My Files'
  
  

  
  
  

  OR

  
  
  

  sudo chown -R peachy:peachy '/media/1TB External'
  
  

You are now the owner of the partition and should be able to do whatever you want with the drive or partition.

To change ownership of NTFS partitions, see:

• How do I use 'chmod' on an NTFS (or FAT32) partition?




• How to 'chown' on an NTFS ( or FAT32 ) partition?