[jriggy]

I am in need of a 2tb external drive for my 09 iMac. It is on the fritz for the second time in 4 months and I need to get a new drive to backup everything...

 And I gotta go buy one today!

Any brand I should get? Or any brand I should stay away from???

I will be getting a new iMac and will use this as my time machine, afterwards.

Thanks for the quick help!

[JohnR]

You have a 6-year old iMac with no backups?

I'd suggest first copy the really important stuff onto USB sticks. And/or copy it into your dropbox account or whatever online storage you already have set up.

Then go get two drives of different brands from the local office supply store and make a Time Machine backup onto one, and a Carbon Copy Clone onto the other. If the latter is an SSD, so much the better.

[jriggy]

Perfect John. Thank you!

Well, I have part of it backed up but it has been a year with new work and data (time flies!) and my current backup drive is on the old side, so I would rather get a new one. I just need to do it today.

Thanks for the help. And I promise to stY on top of it from here out!

[jriggy]

Taken care of! Got some drives waiting for pick up at the local staples... It has been so long I didn't know if the brand even mattered anymore. But I'm good to go now.

Thanks again John!

[JohnR]

No worries. Given that you had to get one urgently I don't think there was much choice. That's why I suggested getting two different ones and making a redundant backup.

Remember that there are two parts to a "hard drive":  the drive itself, and the enclosure. On the drive itself, it seem to depend more on the specific model than the manufacturer. They all (all....? three manufacturers left? Or only two?) make drives in different grades. newegg is a good place to vet a prospective drive purchase, after looking at a bunch you will get an idea of which drives are a better bet.

On the enclosure, I'd recommend replacing the cheap one with a good quality one. I really like the Firmtek miniSwap if you want to use 2.5" drives. OWC is a popular choice for Mac users.