Why don't I have permission to transfer my own files from an external hard drive?

I have a brand new MacBook Pro with OS X Yosemete installed. This is my first Mac; before this I've always used PCs.
I have a music library of about 35,000 songs (around 165 gigs) which I have stored on an external drive. The drive is actually an old PC hard drive which I had encased when the motherboard of that computer died.
I bought a new (3T) MyBook for Mac to store my music on with the new computer. The old drive is almost full...and it's old...so I chose to just get a new drive and transfer the files, as opposed to re-formatting the old drive.
I connected both drives to my Mac and attempted to transfer the entire iTunes folder, hoping to "set it and forget it." About 15 minutes into the process, the transfer stopped and I received a "you don't have permission" error message. Through trial and error, I learned that this is only the case with some of the files.
Of course, I own these files...they're all mine. I tried changing the permissions but it just shows, "You can only read," and that is greyed out. I read something about clicking a padlock but I have yet to see one of those. I read all about reformatting the drive...but to do that I would first need to back up the files and delete them. However I cannot back up the files because I don't have "permission" to move them. If I could...I would not need to reformat the drive!
So the process has unfortunately been very slow and tedious...transferring a handful of artist files at-a-time, until I run into files which I can't move, and then isolating them. I'll eventually be done with this, but then of course there's still the problem of the songs which I own being completely unaccessible to me.
Does anyone have suggestions for me as to what can be done?  I appreicate it...I'm so new to Mac!

Drag one account's home folder to the other account's desktop, open the Users & Groups pane of System Preferences, and delete that account.
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