Root owns my CD-RW's after re-inst. - can't burn

[Ari Torhamo]

Hello!

I know that security is important and that it may bring you some extra
work, but I wish there was a way to make it work more smoothly. Here's
the latest problem I encountered:

When I try to burn on a CD-RW that has files from previous Ubuntu
installation or Windows in it, the burning process stops just before the
burning starts and the following error message comes up: "Put a
re-writable or empty disc into the drive" (my translation from Finnish).
I spent a couple of hours trying different disks (copying files to the
hard disk first - I don't have any empty CD-RW's at the moment) and
looking for a relevant setting, before it came to my mind to check the
file ownership - yes, the owner was root. I have had problems with the
file ownerships in different situations before, so this should have been
the first thing to come to my mind, it's just so unintuitive not to be
an owner to a disc you have been writing on tens of times, last time
being just a few hours before.

Apparenly the ownership being changed to root is the reason for that
burning doesn't start (is it?), but what might be the way to get around
this obstacle? I can't change the file ownerships and I can't empty the
CD-RW. I tried to start Nautilus from the command line by doing "sudo
nautilus" and then tried again burning to the CD-RW, but this didn't
seem to change anything. BTW, it's strange that I have re-installed
Ubuntu two times before this and I don't remember facing this situation
before - I'm pretty sure I would remember. Has something changed in
Ubuntu in this area?

Embarrasingly I first met this problem after installing Ubuntu into my
brothers PC. I had been telling him about benefits of using Linux and
how much security is emphasized in the Linux world. Well, there I was
trying to get his files backed up into a CD-RW and couldn't do it. I
would prefer a GUI solution, if there's one, because my brother (and a
couple of other people that I'm helping to switch to Ubuntu) don't want
to have anything to do with the command line.

As always, I would much appreciate any help :-)

-Ari-