External drive mounts with root permissions.

[Jim March]

With Ubuntu Karmic 64 I had the same problem: had to do most mounting
of USB disk devices (flash or conventional) as root.  It was a pain in
the butt.  Ubuntu isn't supposed to do that, they've long claimed to
have that issue licked.

So far they seem to have it under control in Lucid, which is now at
Beta2, I've been running it since the very first day of Beta1.  You
might consider upgrading.

Jim