Markus--
I followed your instructions, except for leaving off the "gid=(myusername)" part of the fstab line, and it works perfectly!

Here are the additions to my fstab file in case anyone can use them:

none /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0
/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 auto noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1 auto noauto,users,exec,umask=000 0 0

I added two SCSI devices because I also have a USB-IDE adapter for a laptop HDD that I often use. I suppose it's as easy as adding another mountpoint folder to the /mnt directory and another line to fstab if I want to add another....

Thanks again, Markus, you're a lifesaver!

C ya,
Dutch