[Someone]

“Keep the external drive ready to go on your desk at any time”

Make that “Keep an external drive”

If you only have one backup drive, and it’s on your desk, it can easily be destroyed in a disaster that destroys the hard drive in the computer on your desk.

You need at least one off-site backup.

[glynnforrest]

Agree 100%. 3 different copies of the data, on at least 2 different mediums, with 1 off-site.

Reducing the obstacles to making any backups at all is a good first step though!