As of 6.06, the latest commands that will assist in mounting a windows-type partition, vfat (fat32) or ntfs. (likely pretty applicable towards older releases as well, but I'm not 100% sure if the syntax/commands will be the same.)
mounting a fat partition manually: (and allow all users to read/write)
sudo mkdir media/windows (or whatever you decide to name it)
sudo mount /dev/hdk1 (used as an example here) /media/windows/ -t vfat -o iocharset=utf8,umask=000
mounting an ntfs partition manually: (and allow all users to read only)
sudo mkdir media/windows
sudo mount /dev/hdk1 (used as an example here) /media/windows/ -t nfts -o nls=utf8,umask=0222
Alternatively, you can also apply these steps to mount partitions on boot-up:
NTFS: (READ ONLY)
sudo mkdir /media/windows
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup (if you wish to back up this config file)
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
In the opened text file, add the following line at the end of the document:
/dev/hdk1 (used as an example here) /media/windows ntfs nls=utf8,umask=0222 0 0
save the file.
FAT: (READ/WRITE)
sudo mkdir /media/windows
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup (again, if you need to back up the config file)
sudo gedit /etc/fstab
In the opened text file, add the following line at the end of the document:
/dev/hdk1 (used as an example here) /media/windows vfat iocharset=utf8,umask=000 0 0
save the file.
to mount all unmounted partitions, without rebooting, simply type in the terminal,
sudo mount -a
if the partitions are already mounted, then you can type in the terminal,
sudo umount hdk1 (used as an example here)
then type
sudo mount -a (this will mount all unmounted disks/partitions at this point)
This was a bit tricky for me to grasp at first too. Going to the Ubuntu wiki, however, will give a good step-by-step set of information about a good number of basic tasks, such as mounting disks/partitions, and/or configuring samba for file/print sharing.
There is an option for allowing NTFS partitions to be READ/WRITE on bootup, but that's a bit too advanced/experimental for my tastes...Therefore I'm simply mounting the partitions as ntfs and transferring them over the network. Once that's done, I'll likely reformat the ubuntu's NTFS partitions as ext3 and move everything back over.
Hope this helps.