I had a pretty simple setup , Just 2 external hard drives, both about 2-3 years old one Seagate 2TB drive and another WD 5TB drive, the 2TB drive died last month, not sure why, but just one day Windows would not recognize it, it still spun and everything, but I just could not access the files, it was probably corrupt. But now everything Is stored on my main PCs SSD and that 5TB HDD which I am now baby-ing, that was the impetus to start taking my rampant data hoarding more seriously.
but I am a newbie at all of this, so where would I begin? for my purposes I am mostly saving Images, PC Backups and Videos and I do not have the means or funds to set up a NAS, and due to constantly moving around, something that can be portable would be nice (but obviously not a requirement.) I've tried Cloud Storage but that is not really for me (I do not feel like paying for any subscriptions at this moment.) so I've thought about picking up a portable SSD but I am not sure if there is a much more simple, cheaper and more durable solution that I am not aware of.
EDIT: I also imagine having my game drive and archival drive be one in the same is not ideal so I have been trying to separate games from saved data.