"apply to enclosed items" doesn't seem to do anything

Hi all! I recently had the HDD in my iMac replaced . When it came back from the shop, they'd created a dummy admin user. I restored from Time Machine, deleted the dummy and everything seemed to be OK. However, I have a large number of files on an external RAID (my photo library, etc) and I noticed that some of the subfolders don't have the correct permissions. I figured "No problem. I'll just select the top folder, add my actual account to the permissions, delete the dummy user from the permissions and tell it to "Apply to enclosed items."

The thing is, the first couple of times I did that (a few weeks back) on some folders on the RAID, it took a long time to propagate. This makes sense because, for example, my photo library has several million files and tons of folders in it. But I noticed some other stuff that had the little red mark on the folder, and the permissions DON'T have my username on them. So, again, I go to the top folder, update the permissions, and tell it to apply. It finishes in a second or two, and the folders that don't have my user assigned STILL don't have them assigned.

These are all data files on the external drive. Not the home folder or anything like that. I'm also concerned that maybe the other attempts to update that APPEARED to work, didn't actually work (e.g., maybe 90%) but there's no way to know without drilling into each subfolder, etc. Which is not practical.

So my question is...is there a reason why "Apply to enclosed items" wouldn't do anything? Yes, I unlock the permissions first. And if I select the folder where I don't have permission, and give myself permission, the folder is now OK, but the files (and folders) in it still don't have the permissions updated. Oh, and one last thing, which might be relevant: it looks like the dummy admin account was assigned ownership of everything. I deleted that account after I'd restored my "real" one and now when look at the permissions for any of these files, I see an entry that says "fetching" for that deleted account.

Thanks!