Question: Q: Can Encryped Backups be copied, moved, duplicated, transfered, or consolidated in one place?

Yes. There is no real difference between encrypted and unencrypted once you decrypt the drive by providing your password when you mount the encrypted drive.

You would never be able to copy them using iCloud, so forget about that.

Backups themselves are not encrypted. They are only encrypted if your backup disk is encrypted. You can turn encryption on or off for your backups.

I am not entirely sure what you are asking. However, backups are useful in case disaster strikes and you need to restore. Otherwise, they don't have any value. By that, I mean you don't need to worry about saving or copying them. You probably aren't going to restore to High Sierra at this point.

I suggest just using the 2 TB drive. If you want to encrypt it, then turn on encryption. It will take a long time, but it will get done eventually.

As I said before, don't bother trying to copy backups. That's never going to work.

I'm still not sure exactly what you have been doing or exactly what you are trying to do. I can tell you the following:

• An SSD is faster than a mechanical hard drive. Partitions have nothing to do with that.
• You don't need an SSD for Time Machine backups. If you have been attempting tasks that only complete because you are using an SSD, then you are doing it wrong.
• You don't have to partition your Time Machine backups. You can put them all on the same disk.
• I don't know how much data you are trying to backup. I'm also not sure exactly how big any of these drives are. A Time Machine backup drive should be about 2-3 times larger than all of the disks you are backing up to it. So if you have a Time Machine destination that is 1 TB, then you should only use that drive with a single 250 GB or 500 GB machine.
• Time Machine is the most effective and reliable backup system ever made. It is also the easiest to use. Take a blank external drive. Plug it in. When the operating system asks if you want to use it for Time Machine, say yes. That's it. That's all you need to do. Any thing else that you do to Time Machine will only make it less reliable.