No permission to access new (second) hard drive

[crashlanding]

Hello, I have a new Ubuntu 20.04.6LTS installation with two hard drives. The second hard drive appears in Files > Other Locations. When I select it it says Folder is Empty. So I tried to copy a folder to the second hard drive. I get "Error while copying. The folder cannot be copied because you do not have permission to create it in the destination." In files, I tried to create a folder on the new drive by right clicking. But the New Folder option is gray, unavailable. The New Folder option in the drop down menu from the Drive2 thing in the upper left of Files, is also gray and unavailable. I right clicked in the directory area and selected properties (for the second drive). Under permissions, all three boxes are grayed out, and it tells me "You are not the owner, so you cannot change these permissions." I looked this up on the internet and found that I probably need to use the chmod command. However, everything I found is about not being able to access a file, not about accessing the hard drive. I don't know how to use chmod so it fixes the drive, (or the partition).
Please tell me how to gain access to the second hard drive.

In case this helps, here is what I get when I use the df -h command:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 16G 0 16G 0% /dev

tmpfs 3.2G 2.6M 3.2G 1% /run
/dev/nvme0n1p2 1.9T 9.8G 1.8T 1% /
tmpfs 16G 0 16G 0% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 16G 0 16G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup

/dev/loop0 128K 128K 0 100% /snap/bare/5
/dev/loop2 92M 92M 0 100% /snap/gtk-common-themes/1535
/dev/loop3 46M 46M 0 100% /snap/snap-store/638
/dev/loop1 64M 64M 0 100% /snap/core20/1828
/dev/loop4 347M 347M 0 100% /snap/gnome-3-38-2004/119
/dev/loop5 50M 50M 0 100% /snap/snapd/18357
/dev/nvme0n1p1 511M 51M 461M 10% /boot/efi
tmpfs 3.2G 108K 3.2G 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sda1 231G 1.8G 230G 1% /media/chris/USBFlash256
/dev/nvme1n1p1 1.9T 28K 1.8T 1% /media/chris/Drive2
/dev/loop6 39M 39M 0 100% /snap/snapd/21759
/dev/loop7 64M 64M 0 100% /snap/core20/2318
/dev/loop8 350M 350M 0 100% /snap/gnome-3-38-2004/143

[yancek]

The df -h command only shows mounted partitions. mounted simply meaning accessible so that output doesn't really help anyone to help you. The output you posted shows:

/dev/nvme0n1p2 1.9T 9.8G 1.8T 1% /
/dev/nvme0n1p1 511M 51M 461M 10% /boot/efi

That would be the Ubuntu system partition (partition 2) , the partition with the root ( / ) symbol at the end. The second partition is your EFI partition. The output below shows your 2 other drives, one 231G and one 1.9T.

/dev/sda1 231G 1.8G 230G 1% /media/chris/USBFlash256
/dev/nvme1n1p1 1.9T 28K 1.8T 1% /media/chris/Drive2

To get information on them as far as permissions and owner:group you should use the ls command to list that information. Just open a terminal and run the commands below. To get the same information on the contents of these directories, any directory or file inside, run the commands and omit the 'd' in ls -ld.

ls -ld /media/chris/USBFlash256
ls -ld  /media/chris/Drive2

Do these drives have Linux filesystems. If they are windows, you need to set this in the /etc/fstab file as windows doesn't use/understand the standard Linux rwx permissions. The link below gives an example of changing ownership if that is what is needed. You don't indicate the owner:group but based on your post, it is likely root:root which is standard. Just as an FYI, a standard user generally does not have permission to write/delete outside the /home/user directory. That's very basic with Linux. You need to use sudo to do these things that require administrator privileges to change system settings. There are many sites which explain how to change owner:group such as the one below. If the link below doesn't help, just do an online search until you find one you understand.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1368...additional-hdd

[crashlanding]

Hi Yancek, These are all Linux filesystems. I should have removed the flash drive before using df -h.
I reviewed the information you sent a link to and it worked on the first try. "sudo chown name:name /media/name/Drive2"
Thank you very much.

[yancek]

You're welcome. Good thing to remember if you continue using Linux is that in general, a user will not have access to much of anything outside the /home/user directory so if and when you add external media you will need to modify owner:group and user permissions on any Linux filesystem.