That's exactly why I asked you if you were in your home folder denoted by ~ before the $ prompt or you are in /home/user/MyDocs. These are basically part of two separate file systems. /home/user becomes part of /home which is ext2. So changing file permissions will work there. However, /home/user/MyDocs is a VFAT file system. Changing file permissions will not work there. Do one simple example: In your ~ folder (/home/user) create a file as: Code: ~ $ touch tmp_file Then, change the file permissions: Code: ~ $ chmod 777 tmp_file ~ $ ls -l tmp_file You will see that the file permissions have changed as rwxrwxrwx Now cd to /home/user/MyDocs and repeat this procedure. The file created there will have permissions -rw-r--r--. Also the group owner will be root and not users. If you try chmod 777 on the tmp_file here the permissions will still remain as -rw-r--r--.
~ $ touch tmp_file
~ $ chmod 777 tmp_file ~ $ ls -l tmp_file