Hello
Thank you very much for this solution, it has indeed fixed my problem, at least most of it
It took me over an hour with experimenting around and additional googling, because i got confused with the "vfat" and "subfs" and "floppyfss" thing - also too many other options (cuid???) available which i had no idea as to what to do with.
I got the correct details of the attached drives via "mount" and then basically copied the entries from there into the fstab - which had me end up with a very slow starting Linux. However after editing again and chosing the option "noauto" instead of "auto" it started quickl again and now it does just like it is supposed to - the icons are in "My Computer" and as soon as i plug the USB drive or any memory card in, they auto-mount and are accessable.
Now i have given (as root) full read and write access to the "user" ans also included the "users" option in the fstab for each one of the devices (sdd1 -> memory stick, sda1 -> MMC, sde1 -> external HDD partition 1, sde5 -> external HDD partition 2, sde6 -> external HDD partition 3 and sde7 -> external HDD partition 4).
However i can NOT write anything to the external HDD at all! The error message goes like "you have no permissions to write to /dev/media/sde7", for example. All these partitions are NTFS, and i can ALSO not write to any NTFS partition on the fixed HDD even tough also there i have (as root) assigned full rights to "user" (read, modify, enter are all the available options).
Without being able to write to the external HDD it is useless - i tought this as a "emergency exit' if my Windows would screw up and i could use Linux to copy from the external (which holds a backup of the internal, they are identical HDD's) to the internal disk.
Is there a way to get that done?
I can write fine to the Memory Stick and the MMC.
And also, regarding the Memory Stick and the MMC. These are formatted in FAT 16. If i need to format them from Linux, will it use FAT 16 or FAT 32? Because "vfat" doesn't mention "16" or "32". It's absolutely got to be "16" because otherwise both devices can no longer be used in their respective machines (a Nokia phone and a Sony digicam).
Thank you very much for your advise and help, i really apreciate it
Kind regards.....
your Thanh