ok, I got the additional SATA cables and hooked up the second disk. got it formatted and created a partition -- type EXT4 -- which it selected apparently as the default.

now I can get it mounted but what do i do to grant permissions on it ?

I see the device is mounted and owned by /media/ -- which is owned by root.

so a SUDO command is going to be needed,--

can I sudo mkdir and then sudo chomod permission on that directory ? if i sudo mkdir the new directory will be owned by root still,-- i think