I found a (lengthy) guide to doing this but it is for gksu which is gone. I have to imagine there’s an easy way. I am running Ubuntu. There is no specific use case, it is just a feature I miss from windows.
EDIT: I always expect a degree of hostility and talking-down from the desktop Linux community, but the number of people in this thread telling me I am using my own computer that I bought with my own money in a way they don’t prefer while ignoring my question is just absurd and frankly should be deeply embarrassing for all of us. I have strongly defended the desktop Linux community for decades, but this experience has left a sour taste in my mouth.
Thank you to the few of you who tried to assist without judgement or assumptions.
Just saw your edit. One thing you should be doing is taking ownership of directories you plan to be working in. So for an external drive for example, you’d want to make sure your user(s) have r/w/x permission recursively (granting permission for all files and folders underneath using the same command) on the root folder of the drive then you can move stuff on and off freely.
I agree it could be more straightforward, but ideally you’d only have to do it one time when you first use the drive with that machine