Some considerations when planning how you store your data.
Any drive type can fail – Hard drive, SSD, USB flash drive, or SD card all store only one copy of your data. Store data on multiple drives to keep it safe.
Mechanical hard drives are more fragile but easier to recover – Hard drives offer more recovery options than SSDs, perhaps because the technology is a few decades older. Also, hard drives that are common place are easier to recover than drives with special features or large capacities.
Cloud storage is secure and reliable – If you only work with documents and some photos, use a cloud storage service like Google Drive, OneDrive, or DropBox. These services are more secure and reliable than any other storage solution. Add your phone number to your account so that you can regain access in case of a lost password or device. Review the emails you receive about any new devices that login into your account.
Keep large archives on a NAS – If you have a large archive of files like photos and videos, consider a NAS with at least 2 drive bays so that you have redundancy in case one drive fails. This solves the problem of technology failing but doesn’t solve problems related to malware, theft, fire, flood, and other disasters. To guard against those scenerios, you will need an off-site or offline backup.
Portability is also data loss – If you carry all your data with you, actually losing the drive becomes a real problem. The drive you bring with you should be considered temporary storage. Offload files from it to your home storage when you are able to. Take files with you but keep the copy on your home storage.