Ubuntu – How to auto mount a flash drive with root and read/write/execute privileges

Your problem seems to be about the permissions you have set. FAT / FAT32 formatted drives don't support file permissions. The permissions for everything are determined by how the drive is mounted. When you set the permission open it worked when you

server# sudo mount /dev/sdb2 /home/storage -o umask=000

As for it not auto mounting on reboot

UUID=8C52-C1CD /home/storage auto user,umask=000,utf8, -->noauto<-- 0 0

The "noauto" makes this NOT automatically mount when the system starts and parses the /etc/fstab file. Remove that option and it will mount on startup. You can set the permissions on the mount point once it's mounted with chmod or specify them in /etc/fstab.

If you need the media user to access it, you can set the permissions to 764, and add them to the security group. Root always has access to everything.

see http://www.linux.org/threads/file-permissions-chmod.4094/ for some examples of propper file permissions

On a side note, bodhi.zazen made a good point Is there some reason you need to use FAT ? If not, I would back up the data and use a linux native file system. You can then set ownership and permissions.

In the man fstab page we find the noauto parameter...

  The fourth field (fs_mntops).
          This  field  describes  the  mount  options  associated with the
          filesystem.

          It is formatted as a comma-separated list of options.   It  con‐
          tains at least the type of mount (ro or rw), plus any additional
          options appropriate to the filesystem  type  (including  perfor‐
          mance-tuning options).  For details, see mount(8) or swapon(8).

          Basic filesystem-independent options are:

          defaults
                 use  default  options: rw, suid, dev, exec, auto, nouser,
                 and async.

          noauto do not mount when "mount -a"  is  given  (e.g.,  at  boot
                 time)

          user   allow a user to mount

          owner  allow device owner to mount

          comment
                 or x-<name> for use by fstab-maintaining programs

          nofail do  not  report errors for this device if it does not ex‐
                 ist.

Using sudo blkid you can easily determine the proper UUIDs to use.

You'll need to create these entries in /etc/fstab...

sudo -H gedit /etc/fstab

UUID=xxxx-xxxx /media/me/ESP vfat ro,noauto,nofail 0 0
UUID=xxxx-xxxx /media/me/DIAGS vfat ro,noauto,nofail 0 0
UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx /media/me/WINRETOOLS ntfs ro,noauto,nofail 0 0
UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx /media/me/OS ntfs ro,noauto,nofail 0 0

Update #1:

OP replaced Nautilus file manager with Thunar, and Thunar has a separate option to mount external drives. Disable that, and this all works as expected. Not a standard configuration.