[Rick069]

In gnome, how do I create a link to my second hardrive on my desktop?

[antidrugue]

You can create a symlink for it in the ~/Desktop/ directory.

Something like :

cd ~/Desktop
ln -s /mnt/your_hard_drive

(/mnt/your_hard_drive being the mount point of your hard drive)

would work well.

[Rick069]

Having done that, how can I change the permissions of this link so that I can drag and drop files into it? I've noticed that there is a little padlock thing one the icon which has something to do with it.

[antidrugue]

Originally Posted by Rick069

how can I change the permissions of this link so that I can drag and drop files into it?

You don't change permissions on a link. You change permissions on the original directory, or you change the mount options. A link is a link, nothing more.

How do you mount the drive? Which filesystem do you use? Does the user has permissions to write to it?