[cjk2]

Coincidentally this landed on my weekly backup day.

Using Time Machine weekly to an external SSD. Also a separate flat monthly archive to another SSD. And just in case that is not enough, rclone my documents and pictures library (everything) to S3 monthly too.

This is restored once a quarter into my spare Mac mini.

[hammyhavoc]

After having so many sudden failures on SSDs (usually the controller), you may want to consider a spinning rust backup too as they're a little more forgiving in many regards, even if they're more susceptible to shock damage.

In the same breath, lost a lot of spinning rusts over the years, and been at the mercy of data recovery services. Multiple copies, both cold and hot ones backed by parity are important.

I've lost drives I'm restoring backups from multiple times too, as restoration operations tend to be intensive and extended. I also don't recommend the average external spinning rust in a caddy as they're usually not very well ventilated, so they can get very hot and suffer from diminished longevity. Not to mention that a lot of off-the-shelf external drives already in an enclosure are frequently B-grade, or refurbished drives. Yes, even from big manufacturers. Storage is fairly woeful.