Harmy said:

Well, I can't really afford a new HDD right now, but I think I should be able to backup the most essential DeEd files on the remaining HDD I already have - the lossless renders, if nothing else.

Depending on the manufacturer, sometimes they'll offer a cross-ship option on drives under warranty. You basically give them a credit card number, and they send you a new drive right away. Then you have something like 30 days to get the old drive back to them, and they only charge your card if you don't send it back in that time frame. I know I've done that with Western Digital drives before.