[tlug] Can't write to 500GB USB Drive

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

TLUG,

As part of my efforts to ensure I never go through heartache like I did 
with my last hard drive crash, I bought an extra USB external hard drive 
today for backups.

Plugged it in, it was detected right away, so I partitioned and 
formatted it with no problems.

But I can't write to it. I thought maybe I screwed up the formatting or 
something, so I did it again. But no, it seems more like a permissions 
error or something.

I've formatted USB pen drives and SD cards without this issue. What is 
different about a large external hard drive that is different?

Naturally I looked on the web before coming here, but most, if not all, 
people experiencing a similar problem seem to be having it because their 
external drive is NTFS. My external drive is ext3.

Any suggestions on what I should do?

--
Dave M G
http://tlug.jp/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Dave_M_G