How do I let other users access my /media/[username]/HARDDRIVE with Ubuntu 12.10?

Solution 1:

You need to add an entry in fstab to tell it where to mount, and also tell it what permissions it should have. Currently you're letting it automount which is limiting other user's ability to access it.

As near as I can judge, you should add an entry to /etc/fstab which looks like:

LABEL=STORAGE /media/username/STORAGE ntfs-3g  dmask=111 fmask=111  0   0 

Which should give everyone all access to the files and directories except for execute. If you want others to be able to read but not write you would use a dmask/fmask of 113. The mask is the exact opposite of the permissions that you want to allow (that's why it's called a mask). Each number is the octal representation of the binary permissions:

000 = 000 000 000
111 = 001 001 001
777 = 111 111 111

and these bits read

rwx(owner) rwx(group) rwx(world)

Normal permissions to allow anyone to do anything at all are 777 (dangerous!) however if you give 777 as the dmask, it makes the actual permissions 000.

Note that LABEL=STORAGE relies on the drive having the label "STORAGE" that fstab can use as a hook. This way, any device that you plug in with the label "STORAGE" will be mounted this way.