You are in the same boat as many others!
I have had 3 MAXTOR external drives just STOP working. For no good reason...just because.
Thankfully, I had the copies on other drives for most of it.
Take a look at this thread set up for just your situation:
http://samisite.com/forum/index.php?topic=820.msg10812#msg10812FYI, CD's are cheap. Everynow and then I burn a cd with tlx design files and some of the images, etc. Yes I have a backup drive, but I also have a few CD's. If my drive fails, I can at least go back to a previous version of my site and bring it forward if necessary. The CD's are not up to date, but they are another layer of backup since I do not fully trust ANY backup hardware (have had tapes and hard drive fail).