What Else Can I do to Resolve Permission Problems For Disk Drives?

Question

I am unable to access several of my hard drives. Three external Firewire drives are unavailable from my MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard. A non-bootable internal drive in a now defunct G5 is unavailable on a G4 computer running Tiger via the firewire terminal feature (other internal G5 drive is okay). And an external firewire drive connected to the G4 is not available.
I have tried to reset privileges by:
Use of Disk Utility
Use of CHMOD command in Terminal (sometimes using sudo or sudo -s).
Use of Info panel in finder.
None of these functions allow me to change permissions.
What else is there? What are the best sources of information? Why can I not change "custom" permissions?
When a disk preview in the information panel shows a closed lock (not in the lower place for changing permissions), how do I open the lock? What does it mean?
I could give more details on my steps, but I would need to write a book.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reference. However, I still have the same problem. My latest Terminal session is listed below. Note that all of my directories except for the MacBook Pro HD are not allowed to be listed. They all show up on the desktop but may not be opened in the Finder.
Below, I first generate an extended listing of my volumes. Then I tried unsuccessfully to change my permissions on one of the volumes both directly and as a super user. Then I tried to change the ownership of the volume to Root. After this, I checked my identification and repeated my try to change the permissions.
Last login: Tue May 25 10:52:08 on ttys001
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ pwd
/Users/kelvinsmith
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ ls -l /volumes/
total 8
drw-rw-rw-@ 43 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 1530 May 13 22:37 120 GB Firewire
drw-rw-rw- 23 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 850 May 14 06:36 250 GB Firewire LT
drw-rw-r-T 26 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 952 May 15 11:48 ARCHIVES G5 1TB5
drw-rw-rw- 29 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 1054 May 18 13:37 Archives LT 1TB4
drw-rw-r-T@ 48 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 1700 May 15 11:48 BACK 120FW 1TB3
drw-rw-r-T 51 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 1802 May 16 07:49 BACK 160INT 1TB1
drw-rw-r-T 18 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 680 May 15 16:45 BACK 200INT 1TB2
drw-rw-r-T 34 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 1224 May 15 11:48 BACK IBOOK 1TB4
drw-rw-rw- 23 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 850 May 14 06:36 Back 250 FW LT 1TB3
drw-rw-rw- 10 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 408 Apr 19 14:26 Back Time Mach LT 1TB2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 May 25 10:44 MacBook Pro HD -> /
drw-rw-rw- 56 kelvinsmith kelvinsmith 1972 Apr 16 23:40 Start Two LT 1TB1
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ chmod 775 /Volumes/250\ GB\ Firewire\ LT
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /Volumes/250 GB Firewire LT: Operation not permitted
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ sudo !!
sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/250\ GB\ Firewire\ LT
Password:
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /Volumes/250 GB Firewire LT: Operation not permiKKKKKKKeKKKKKKeKeKKKKKeKKeKKKKK
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ sudo chown root /Volumes/250\ GB\ Firewire\ LT
chown: /Volumes/250 GB Firewire LT: Operation not permitted
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ id
uid=501(kelvinsmith) gid=501(kelvinsmith) groups=501(kelvinsmith),403(com.apple.sharepoint.group.2),204(developer),100(_lpoperator),98(_lpadmin),80(admin),61(localaccounts),12(everyone ),401(com.apple.accessscreensharing),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ ls -nd /Volumes/250\ GB\ Firewire\ LT
drw-rw-rw- 23 501 501 850 May 14 06:36 /Volumes/250 GB Firewire LT
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$ sudo chmod 775 /Volumes/250\ GB\ Firewire\ LT
Password:
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /Volumes/250 GB Firewire LT: Operation not permitted
Kelvin-Smiths-Laptop:~ kelvinsmith$
Do you see any errors on my part?