I was involved in data protection for about 20 years when I worked for a large global corporation. I can't stress enough how important it is to properly backup your system. I remember many sad faces and irate bosses when they discover that their data is not backed up as they had thought. I think most of us on this forum backup our data in one way or another. I'd just like to add a few points:

1. Check your backups frequently. Don't go months without doing so and then find out when you need to restore something that your backup drive filled and your backups have been failing since last christmas.
2. Make sure any new data drive gets added to backup routine. Seems obvious, but sometimes forgotten.
3. Have an offsite backup. If your only backup is a hard drive in close proximity to your computer then a small catastrophy (fire, water leak, etc..) could wipe out both. If you don't want to do cloud backup then have multiple backup drives that you rotate offsite routinely.
4. Be aware that a malicious hacker could destroy all you data on your local network. Even if you pay off a ransomware attacker there is no guarantee that you will get your data back. Today this is happening at both large and small corporations and governments. Hence the importance of offsite backups.

I think the best approach is to have both local and cloud backup. A local backup gives you quick restore capability and cloud gives you the offsite protection. All that being said, I think its time I reviewed my own backup scheme :) Doesn't hurt to do that once in a while.

Regards,

Alan