Time Machine changed my driver permissions - can't change back

Hello,
I've been using my external hard drive for about 6 months to backup my work, never had a problem.
Today I mounted the drive, as usual, and a window came up asking me if I wanted to use it for time machine backup. I clicked OK, thinking I could backup my new work, then when I saw that I would have to format my drive, I decided it was not what I needed, since I have all my old work in it.
So I de-selected my drive from the window where it asks which drive to be used for time machine, and turned TM off before doing any operations.
Since then my hard disk has become "read-only"!! Luckily I haven't lost any of my work, but I am now unable to set the permission back to "read - write". The "Repair Disk Permissions" button is greyed out.. and if I do GetInfo, I can only see it is read only, but I have no option to change that.
Any idea why time machine changed my settings before I even used it??
How can I change it back?
Thank you

aleternum wrote:
I was searching on all kinds of website and I realised one thing:
Yesterday I took some files to the printer, and the guy (he was using PC) took the files off my hard drive, and DISCONNECTED the drive without doing the "Safely remove hardware".
Not it all makes sense. I should go kill him.
I rather suspect that TM is at fault. TM drives have to be formatted HFS and by what you describe it sounds like it started reformatting the drive when you stopped it.

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