Ownership enabled?

I have a 2TB back up drive that I used for my Time Machine program. (iMac) Then I switched to a 3TB back up drive where the majority of my backups are located. The backup files on the 2TB drive are older and I would like to save them as I've got some sort of error popping up that I think a reformat might solve, but of course I'd lose all of the data on the 2TB drive.

I tried to do a copy/move to an older, but good, 1TB drive to save the Time Machine files, but a warning comes up that says ". . . . doesn't have ownership enabled".

This is "over my head" without some guidance and/or tips. Can anyone shed some light on this issue?

My goal is to save the backups and reformat the 2TB drive.

Rather than fooling around with the ownership or permissions, it might be best to clone the 2 TB drive to the 1 TB drive as long as there is room. It may or may not work if the 2 TB drive has problems. You can use either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper trial version to do the clone. The trial versions will work for awhile.

Another approach is to use Disk Utility to repair the 2 TB drive. If it succeeds, you can continue using the 2 TB drive for the time being.