Urgent help in changing permissions NTFS Hard Dri

Hi
I am a complete novice with Linux. I am taking my Aspire one on a round the world trip and have purchased a USB Hard Drive to store photos etc. Unfortunately I have run into 'Permissions problem'. The drive has been mounted and is in read only mode. I have scaned the posts but cant get any of the suggestions to work. Using the file manger and opening Permissions tab I can see Owner: root(root) and Access options are greyed out and not chanageable.
Any help would be appreciated as I'm leaving UK next week.
Please bear in mind I do not have any knowledge of Linux. Thanks

 

I not sure that Linpus as delivered on the AA1 is able to write to NTFS drives. If you don't write files > 2GB, then just reformat your USB drive to FAT32. The AA1 and Windows computers can read and write FAT32 formatted drives. Windows may not let you reformat a large drive to FAT32 but the drive manufacturer usually has a program for this.

Some users have installed ntfs-3g on the AA1 to write to NTFS formatted drives but this may update the kernel and cause some side effects.

 

Thanks Jinx022, you saved the day.
Took your advice contacted drive supplier, they supplied download for win xp to re format / partition drive to Fat32 using my desktop pc. Now able to read/write to the drive.
Once again thanks for your help.