How do I use BatChmod to fix things?

Your suggestion is clear; but, I had already experimented, Creative Scientific that I am, and had done what I described above in an attempt to repair things on that partition ... what did I actually do? The Get Info on partition Docs shows:

Owner: system
Access: Read and Write

Group: admin
Access: Read and Write

others: Read only

and the individual folders and their contents show:

Owner: "local username"
Access: Read and Write

Group: admin
Access: Read and Write

others: Read only

I'm wondering if things are back to normalcy, but I don't have much to compare it to ... originally using CCC 3.2.1 across a Network, the Docs partition had the issues with Owner (local username) , Group (unknown) and Others. {an example in ( )}.

Would also like to apply this "technique" to my Apps partition ... but I sense that may be a deeper issue since "name.app" is really a packaged deal?

Have to admit, I've muddied the waters with my attempts to physically move disks and backup partitions around 2 of my computers, further adding use of Leopard on one, and Tiger on the other, and am now trying to use them as a backup for each other ... along with wanting to continue to work on files on each in my 2 studios. I started a thread here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2039322&tstart=0

but I'm guessing it was too involved to invoke much more of a response than "run away" ... or more from my childhood: "duck and cover".

I have CCC, OnyX, BatChmod and applejack (current/OS X dependent versions) as tools for backup and repair, but need some guidance how to do so. Maybe making Owner "system" on all my Apps and Docs (partition level and subfolders) would solve all my issues, across machines and locally?

Have I messed up my system (those invisible files, etc), and things are now poised to eventually break apart? The Docs partition files appear to behave normally: I can open files, modify with apps, and Save them, and also copy files to the folders, without having to Authenticate. Before, Saving didn't work and I had to Authenticate to copy to them.

Suggestions welcomed.

Partitions.

My hard drive partitioning scheme is:

Leopard 10.5.7
Tiger 10.4.11
Apps
Docs

Each is a separate partition.

When I'm booted into Leopard, they show up under Disk Utility as:

/.
/Volumes/Tiger 10.4.11
/Volumes/Apps
/Volumes/Docs

I'm hoping its not exactly the same as running BatChmod on a "whole volume" ... which is warned against on the BatChmod page.

I also have a note in to its creator ... maybe he'll respond, European Time (France?).

Thanks for the reference on explanations about Access and Permissions ... was looking for that, and others.

(Clarification: I'm not using the Home folder for my documents ... I use a separate partition. When I drag the Docs partition to BatChmod, it shows up as /Volumes/Docs)

According to the BatChmod creator, if I understood him correctly, there's no issues in changing the whole extra partition's Owner, Group and Everyone ... from the /Volumes/Partition down ... just steer clear of doing it to the OS X partition (my interpretation). So each of my Apps and Docs extra partitions should have no problems when changing all. Also don't need to go back and change the /Volumes/Docs level to system(root),admin,others as I was conjecturing awhile ago ...

Seems like using the latest version of BatChmod 1.51 runs well on both Leopard and Tiger, and changes the parameters as:

Owner: username Read, Write, Execute
Group: admin Read, Write, Execute
Everyone: Read,,Execute

and things seem to have calmed down. Using the username as the Owner, I can Read, Write and Execute without Authentication or Save/Resave issues.