how to mount a vfat (FAT32) drive such that it is writable

• use the following line in your /etc/fstab:
  /dev/hdb4 /scratch vfat auto,user,rw,uid=500 0 0 where:
  /dev/hdb4 is the drive with the FAT filesystem
  /scratch is the directory you want to mount it
  uid=500 is the userid of the user who should own the drive
  (type id to see what your uid number is)