usb external hard drive won't automount

[Default User]

On Tue, 2007-06-26 at 22:13 -0500, Default User wrote:
> Hello! 
> 
> I got a 120 gb Maxtor OneTouch III mini edition usb external hard drive
> to use to backup my Ubuntu 7.04 laptop. It came partitioned and
> formatted with an NTFS filesystem.  It automounted fine,
> as /media/sdb1. 
> 
Time to unmount the drive.  Then the fun began. Right clicking the drive
icon on the desktop and selecting "eject" from the resulting drop down
menu produced two messages in windows: 

"Cannot eject volume" 

and 

"Wriring data to device. There is data that needs to be written to the
device Maxtor OneTouch III before it can be removed. Please do not
remove the media or disconnect the drive."

But it wasn't writing any data. It just sat there doing nothing, with no
further messages. So a while later, not knowing what else to do, I
disconnected the drive.  

> After that, the drive wouldn't automount.  But it could be mounted manually as:

> sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 /media/backup 

> and I was able to backup my Ubuntu system using gparted from the Gparted
> live cd. 

The solution was to repartition, reformat,and relabel the drive.  Now it
automounts again. But it still won't unmount by right clicking the drive
icon on the desktop and selecting "eject" from the resulting drop down
menu. The only way to unmount the drive is to do so manually, by opening
a terminal window and entering: 

sudo umount -t ext3 /media/backup 

But a usb flash drive automounts just fine, and unmounts by right clicking 
the drive icon on the desktop and selecting "eject" from the resulting drop down 
menu. So why won't the usb external hard drive? Has anyone else run into this? 
> 
Note: the icon drop down menu "properties" selection shows the usb hard
disk as "external: yes" and "removable no". A usb flash drive shows as
"external: yes" and "removable: yes (ejectable)". 

So, how can the usb hard drive be made to unmount without opening a
terminal and manually typing in a command, just as the usb flash drive
does. (Yes, I have tried changing owner and group permissions. Doesn't
solve the problem.