Why don't the partitions mount on start up ?

Hi to mount automatically the partition, you can add entry in a /etc/fstab file.

Please elaborate on the answer .. am new to ubuntu ....

Hi, here is the setup I use on my Ubuntu 9.04 machine, it should probably work the same way for intepid:

first you get the UUID of your partitions with 'sudo blkid' (you will have to know the partitions though, If you don't mount them manually and type 'df' that will list all mounted partitions and their mount points)
Once you have that open your fstab file with admin rights with 'gksu gedit /etc/fstab'.
Note: don't dare to edit the already existing entries. You'll probably break your system.

add a line for every patition you want to auto-mount on startup like this:
UUID=BCC8D97AC8D932FE /mount/point ntfs-3g relatime 0 0

first is the uuid of your partition
second is the mount point where you want to access the drive in like /media/disk
third is the used driver (I use ntfs-3g here, maybe you'll need to install it from the repositories or use ntfs instead.)
fourth are the mount options (you can get them with 'man ntfs-3g' or 'man mount' for ntfs)
the numerical values are:
dump: no idea, never used anything else than 0 here
pass: pass in which the periodical filesystem check should be done. I don't think you will want to check the drive so use 0

Hope that helps :)

Oh, I forgot to mention this:
all those commands like 'sudo blkid' are terminal commands
you can open a terminal in applications->accessories->terminal

Thanks S.Vikash Koushik, that solved my question.