Kubuntu vs. Ubuntu

[msmarti58]

>Ubuntu decided to standardize on GNOME as their desktop environment.  

Yes, I realize that, but they must have some other differences, since GNOME
found my other disc drives right away, and KDE did not. I still have not
found a way to make Kubuntu recognize those. Without it recognizing those
other drives, it is useless to me, because those are where all my other
files are, songs, documents, whatnot. I have three hard drives. One has
Windows Vista on it, and is 300 gig, my old 40 gig hard drive I installed
Ubuntu on to check it out, and the other 500 gig is an external network
share for storage only between me and the rest of the family, no operating
system.

>If you installed the same version of each one (eg. Ubuntu Feisty vs.
Kubuntu Feisty) then you should have had the same results with both.  Any
difference you experienced is most likely due to something you did
differently yourself, without being aware of it.

Now, you might have something there, I'm not sure which versions I put on of
each one. I can't look right now, I am in Vista. But still, if it was so
simple in GNOME to locate and mount my other hard drives, then I think KDE
should have found them too. I did nothing differently that I know of. I did
a clean install and specified that it write over the existing 40 gig hard
drive.

Now my main question really is (since I DO like the KDE interface), HOW do I
make it see my other drives? They are NTFS drives. Well, actually it DOES
see them, but it says something odd like I don't have proper permission to
open them. It says I have to have root permission, and I don't know what
that is. I have set myself up to be administrator. I have done some reading
on it but it was WAYYY over my head. If it's too hard to describe here, can
someone point me to a place where it tells me what to do step by step for
newbies like me please? :)

Marti