Permissions problem when copying from backup

Hi,

We recently got a new iMac and i wanted to do a clean install, just copying a few important document folders from our old iMac G5 time machine backup on an external HDD.

Everything went fine apart from now that i want to copy the folders, i get an error message saying that i dont have the permission to do so and only a few files get transferred. i believe it is because it is moving them to a different computer so i am not the original admin, i cannot time machine restore as there are now two different computer backups on it. ive tried getting info and changing the permissions of the folders and enclosed items but it is still not working.

help would be appreciated as they are very important files

You should be able to use either one or both of the terminal commands.
chown to take ownership.
chmod to change the rights.

If you google the two commands you will get many examples of the syntax and uses but it will be something like (memory is a bit fuzzy today).

sudo chmod -R 777 /Volumes/HDDNAME/FOLDERNAME

This command should give itself superuser status and then recursively set the rights on the specified location to read/write/excute for all users. If that fails you need to sudo chown it first but I can't remember the syntax and I am too lazy to check it.

Best to google it first.