external hard drive lock out

[nic]

please can someone help me!
in an attempt to make my external hard drive more secure i changed the permissions on it to no access assuming that as admin i could change this setting again but i now find that the drive only shows in disk utility and i am able to mount and unmount it but it never appears anywhere else.
the drive has the firewire symbol when it is not mounted but the name greyed out and when i mount it the firewire symbol turns into an unknown (blank) file.
if there is a way to rectify this i could really do with some help.
thanks in advance.

 

[nic]

its ok, figured it out myself had to log in as root change the permissions then log back in as myself. nice one, i am now backing everything up to dvd 'cos i dont want to panic like that again......