"I now use the HDD as an external USB drive with the help of a case, eliminating any worry of data backup." For me that's not quite enough, a backup for me requires the same data to be in 3 different places. I usually have important stuff on two hard drives and my own server's hard drive.
If you think Gnome is lightweight, try some of the other DEs. KDE is lighter than Gnome these days!
"I now use the HDD as an external USB drive with the help of a case, eliminating any worry of data backup." For me that's not quite enough, a backup for me requires the same data to be in 3 different places. I usually have important stuff on two hard drives and my own server's hard drive.
If you think Gnome is lightweight, try some of the other DEs. KDE is lighter than Gnome these days!
They're using on-site only storage and consider it a viable backup strategy. That's... Just worrying.