If you depend on your computer for most of your work, then it's important to back up important files and documents in the case your hardware fails.
External hard drives these days are relatively inexpensive for large amounts of storage space, like this external drive that gives you 2 TB of space for about $60.
You can also opt for a cloud storage service like Google Drive, DropBox, or iCloud, but I'd still recommend a physical external HD just in case you were to ever lose access to your online accounts or should you need to access your work when there's no available internet connection.