Unable to change folder ownership...

[hatman]

I have a removable USB hard drive for backup purposes. I usually copy my photographs over to it but this last time I've plugged it in Ubuntu wont let me as I dont have the necessary permissions.

I've tried to change the permissions using gksudo nautilus and that wont change them (current owner is root), so I resorted to command line and went down the sudo chown route, and that wont let me either...


andy@downstairs:~$ sudo chown andy /media/sdd1/andy
chown: changing ownership of `/media/sdd1/andy': Operation not permitted



andy@downstairs:~$ sudo chown andy /media/sdd1/andy/Pictures
chown: changing ownership of `/media/sdd1/andy/Pictures': Operation not permitted


All I want to do is drag and drop my photo folders from my main hdd to my backup USB hdd, it worked previously, any ideas? I'm lost...

EDIT: I've managed to drag/drop the photos usung gksudo nautilus, but would still like to change the ownership from root to me so I dont have to mess around...

[Infinite Indefinite]

Does your hard drive have some sort of physical write-protect?

[ianhaycox]

Running,

$ mount

from a terminal most probably shows the drive mounted read-only (ro)

This has happened to me with a USB Stick that was just pulled out without properly dismounting the drive. The normal sequence is if I insert the drive into a Windows box then forget to 'safely remove' the device, plugging it back into my Ubuntu box shows the same symptoms.

Try unmounting cleaning and/or using a Windows box to insert/remove safely.

[hatman]

Running,

$ mount

from a terminal most probably shows the drive mounted read-only (ro)

This has happened to me with a USB Stick that was just pulled out without properly dismounting the drive. The normal sequence is if I insert the drive into a Windows box then forget to 'safely remove' the device, plugging it back into my Ubuntu box shows the same symptoms.

Try unmounting cleaning and/or using a Windows box to insert/remove safely.

Thats probably what it is, now I think on I seem to remember it being connected once and the PC hanging and I had to reboot...

I'll see if unmounting cleanly sorts it...

Thanks...