Continually missing operand statement

[newzedder]

I was a bit too confident in hoping to get my secondary internal hard drive cleared after Z15 and put it to use as storage.
Got it erased and formatted ok with a single partition; but can't write to it. There is a single directory there called lost and found, with a X on it. The ability to create directories is greyed out.
I searched on here and found this post:

My second storage unit is read-only

Yes, you can change the permissions on the HDD for read/write access. Replace $USER with your actual username and nameofdrive with the actual name of the drive you are changing access to (should be /devsdX something or other): sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /media/$USER/nameofdrive The above command will give you ownership of the HDD.

about changing the ownership from root to me, and followed the sudo chown instructions....
... every permutation I've tried, I keep getting the missing operand statement. I've driven myself up the wall trying to see where I'm going wrong.
sudo chown -R myname:myname/media/myname/dev/sda
also dev/sda1 and devsda and devsda1
None of them get me past the operand barbed wire fence.
Apart from the -R, are there any spaces in the command instruction? (I tried them anyway, still didn't work).
I am missing something probably very obvious, but what?
(goodnight all, will catch up tomorrow)

[Aravisian]

@newzedder

Got it erased and formatted ok with a single partition; but can't write to it. There is a single directory there called lost and found, with a X on it. The ability to create directories is greyed out.

This statement suggests that the partition in question was not fully formatted.

[newzedder]

Thanks for that. I will have to revisit the issue during this weekend and have another go.

[newzedder]

I think I've sorted it. I went back and just repeated the formatting process, using Disks. For whatever reason, after the process had completed, it gave me a hard drive that I could write to and create directories on....nothing greyed out. I shall not question it any further...

[swarfendor437]

I personally prefer to use Gparted. Just select the drive / partition, select 'delete' then 'apply'. Then create new partituon. If going to use for Timeshift snapshots, be sure it is formatted to same file system as the OS.