Simultaneous iMac HDD and External Backup Drive Death

[flyingnome]

I just had a HDD fail on my iMac. I was backing up via time machine to an external WD 750 GB drive that I put in to service at the same time I got my iMac. I went to plug my External HDD directly to my MacBook after I took the iMac to the Apple store, because I use the same one for all of the computers, just on different partitions to back up and the HDD was dead.

I want to know if anyone else has had two drives die at the same time?

If so how can I safeguard against this happening again?

BTW the drive in the mac was a WD 320GB.

 

[miles01110]

Seems fairly odd that two would "die" at the same time. How do you know the external is dead?

 

[flyingnome]

I plugged it into my MacBook to perform a backup and it would not mount. I had it connected before to my iMac and it would automatically back up. Since the iMac went down I wanted to just go directly and the disk would come to life.

 

[Penn Jennings]

I just had a HDD fail on my iMac. I was backing up via time machine to an external WD 750 GB drive that I put in to service at the same time I got my iMac. I went to plug my External HDD directly to my MacBook after I took the iMac to the Apple store, because I use the same one for all of the computers, just on different partitions to back up and the HDD was dead.

I want to know if anyone else has had two drives die at the same time?

If so how can I safeguard against this happening again?

BTW the drive in the mac was a WD 320GB.

You might have had REALLY bad luck. Things like that happen rarely. Like being hit by lightning.

I have a 2TB drive that I use for TM AND and another 1 TB that I backup to a few times a year and take over to my mothers house. I used to just take it to work but I work from home now.

Another option is to use a "cloud" or internet backup option, like carbonite. I have never used those but they sound interesting. There are 3 problems though with this. One, they cost money. Two, you have to trust them. Last, most internet service providers have soft caps on how much data you move per month. For example, Comcast has a 250 GB soft cap per month. So if you backup your 250 GB drive once per month Comcast is gonna get pissed and drop you. However, you should probably only backup your home directory and the software only backs up changed files.

Remember, the rule of thumb is 3 copies (original, backup and offsite) of any important data. A fire, busted pipe or thief could easily take out your system and any disks nearby.


Good luck to you.

 

[flyingnome]

Thanks,
I will be doing the triple backup exercise. I am going to have to play around with it and find out the easiest way to do it. But one idea I have is to backup regularly on a weekly basis to one external drive and then once a month back up to a second one.
Any other ideas on this I would like to hear them.