One word: REDUNDANCY
even if you put it on an external drive & tuck it away, fire, flood, furious wife, or mechanical issue could rob you of all of it... I lost a year's images & stories when a hard drive went bad.
Today I use a 2nd internal hard drive & back everything up to it. I also monthly burn a disc of anything new/ changed, & every few months back up to the lap top & vice versa.
Have a Seagate 1TB external drive that has handled everything I've deemed 'keepable' in 2 decades. It was about $100 at Best Buy.
That said, New Egg had a chasis that I got for $30 several years ago... I have the odd hard drive from old/ dead systems, & you can put an internal drive in this chasis & then use it as an external drive.
good luck!
RA