Ubuntu :: Mount: Only Root Can Mount /dev/sdb1 On /media/MyUSBDrive

I used the ntfs-config utility to mount my windows drives automatically at startup. While doing so, I had my USB-HDD still attached, and after making changes and rebooting, it did something unknown I didn't expect and I cannot mount my USB-HDD again, and it gives me the following error message:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with:
mount: only root can mount /dev/sdb1 on /media/MyUSBDrive

I did manage to open it somehow, but then all the data was erased apart from ~3 GiB [edit: it's got some kind of extra drive built-in which is mounted as a CD-ROM drive, and when I open that one first all the files are missing in the actual drive, otherwise I get the message above]. I don't know what information I should include here, but my fstab looks like this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

[code]....

This line in terminal:

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1

Gives:

fuse: failed to access mountpoint /media/sdb1: No such file or directory

What should I do to recover my files and fix the mount error? [edit: at the very least, how do I backup my files onto my internal HDD so I can format it and recover it in this manner]