Buying a new hard drive, anything to avoid?

[sgould]

As my iMac is failing slowly, I am looking at backing up my back-up!

The iMac is backed up using Time Machine to an external G-Technology 2TB drive. So at the moment I have two copies of everything. If my iMac needs a major repair, who knows what state it will be in when it comes back? I may need to restore from the Time Machine back-up. But that means that I will only have one copy of my "life's work". So I plan to buy a second HD to copy my stuff to, just in case.

The questions are:

1. Any make of HD to avoid? The ones I see on UK sites are Buffalo, Verbatim, LaCie, G-Technology and WD
2. USB 3.0?
3. Back up the data only or change my Time Machine settings to the other drive?

In future, is there any way of using both HDs with Time Machine and alternating them? Or am i getting into RAID territory, which is something I have never understood.

All advice welcome. I'm UK based.

 

[Satcomer]

i would use one for Time Machine and use the other external for a "clone" on your drive. Plus have you used the Single-User mode[/url[ and did a [url=http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417]fsck -yf on it yet?

Plus check with your local Repair shops yet to repair it if possible.

 

[sgould]

Thanks!

I'll have a play with this tonight and see what turns up.

 

[sgould]

It will have to go for a repair. The screen is going black within seconds of being turned on. I cannot see anything, so I can't type instructions or see error reports.

Will report back once it's working again.

 

[stupidusjerkus]

I'm using two Western Digital 3TB drives set up as a RAID mirroring device. This has worked well for me over the past year. Setup is eally easy using Disc Utility, and so far it has handled its own problems well. In fact it's handled its own problems a little too well - I "lost one of the two drives due to a cable failure and I got no indication until I happened to open Disc Utility for an unrelated task.