I'm a bit of an equipment hoarder but anywhere that you can have redundancy is a good thing, IMHO.

So does the store not carry it or does the Lowes website not carry it ? if the website does then just order it and should have maybe next day.

Hal, Neither the Lowes store or website carry the brand/size pump I would want. On a good note, I was shopping on-line and found that the brand/size I am looking at is now 40% more energy efficient than the model I bought in 2004. So, I'll be replacing sooner rather than later.

Yeah, I have a couple back-ups of just about everything. I think it's a good thing with the pond stuff, especially if you have fish.

I keep 2 spare smaller pumps and another mag drive to replace if necessary. I use the smaller pumps to drain out water for quick partial water replacement during the spring-fall season (will attach to the hose and I can put the water in flower beds.) I am bad to pick up a cheap pump from craigslist every so often when perusing what they have for ponds. Many are only a season or so old because some people don't become addicted and think ponding is too much work.

You can use an aquarium trick and run a powerhead like a korlia in your pond that way if the pump goes out its kind of redundant already, but not if you loose power to both.