I'll try and answer 2 questions with one

I said:

You want a line in /etc/fstab (if it's a HD install, it's probably already there: just remove the # in front of it):

/dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 vfat noauto,users,exec,sync,umask=000 0 0
Hmm, that confuses me. How does that work?
/etc/fstab defines what drives/partitions are where and what filesystems they use.

noauto = don't automount this
users = let users have read/write access to the drive/partition
exec = let people with appropriate permissions execute executables on this drive/partition
sync = synchronise read/writes (you won't need this for anything other than a hard drive)

the rest: see man fstab and man mount.

You might like to add yourself to the disk & usb group (you can use kuser to do this)

So, make the mount point, add a reference to it in /etc/fstab, add yourself to the disk & usb group, and as root do

mount -a

That's it. You can now right click on the desktop > create new > floppy device. (You can make a better pair of icons -- or I think a better pair -- by editing the usb symbol

/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/32x32/apps/usb.png

so that you also have a mounted version showing the green triangle at bottom right hand corner. Use the Gimp.)