Replying to External HDD back up?

hey ns

I'm wondering what you all do for your HDD backups? I'm having trouble making a backup of a 2tb WD ultra USB drive.

draggong and dropping the folders via finder doesn't work- after many hours there will be a file that's apparently corrupt causing the whole process to stop.

anothrr option I tried was creating a disk image of the hdd via disk utility. From what I understood this was similar to the process of zipping a folder and compressing the contents. There was an error after many hours letting it run the first time- and the secon time I tried it took about ten hours to get to the stage of copying and then unfortunately I had to pack up the laptop. Gonna try something again tonight- what do you think the best way to do this is? Do you guys have success with time machine?

i should also note the second drive that I want to backup all the files onto is identical as the original.

any insights appreciated!
thanks