What is the best (and cheapest) way to backup photos on Windows 11?

I've an old machine running Windows 11. It has about 8GB of old photos and about 2GB of video. As a safety mechanism, I've backed up the media on an external hard-drive. It's a 32GB hard drive; but I doubt it's reliability.

I'd really appreciate if you could suggest a few cost effective ways to backup photos and videos on my Windows 11? I'm not in favor of paying recurring subscription fee for cloud storage. However, I don't deny the idea either. If there's a backup solution that doesn't break my bank; I'm all open to your suggestions.

Thank you in advance.