thunar invoked by root does not show unmounted partitions in side pane like thunar invoked as user does in Ubuntu 13.10 using plain Openbox as DE

[My name]

Under Ubuntu 13.10, 32 bit version, using Openbox only as the DE, thunar 1.6.3 invoked by root will not show unmounted partitions on an external usb mounted hard drive. Thunar invoked as user shows them in the side pane under "Devices". Once the partition is mounted by clicking on it in Thunar invoked as user (which both mounts and opens it) the shortcut appears in the side pane of root-invoked Thunar as well and root can access it at the same mountpoint, /media/username/partition-label. But the ones that haven't been mounted still do no appear in the root thunar side pane despite the fact they all do in the user thunar side pane.

I don't know if the same problem appears on internal drives as I don't have any at the moment.

I have a thread at ubuntuforums on this here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2214979&p=12976843#post12976843