Why YSK: If you have digital data that is important, (family photos, crypto keys/wallets…). Back it up and prevent permanently losing it.
3 different places its saved to, (iPhone, ICloud, laptop, Facebook, Google, Camera SD, Flash drive…).
2 different media, I would consider iPhone and iCloud the same. Buying two External Drives of the same type and brand too. Why? Consider losing your Apple account or the drive model fails in a year.
1 off site copy. If all your copies are in your house, a flood, fire, tornado, hurricane, EMP… would lose every thing.
0 time to waste. (My own personal add). Do it now. Procrastination is dangerous and is the biggest regret for when things go sideways.
Any software recommendations for backing up to an external drive?
External Drives come with software now to help people sync the data, (for the less techincal).
You could also just manually copy the data by clicking and dragging.
I’m kind of a command line junkie so I use robocopy in scripts.
If you want something simple that just copies / syncs the files. FreeFileSync is the best free one.
There are also Backvp2 and GoodSync with more features, but they are paid.