Keeping a copy of your music archived really is necessary–computers and players have a habit of breaking down when you don’t have a copy of your music/drives around. Do you really want to have to repurchase/relocate your music, and possibly having to re-rip it?
And the nice thing is, the price of external portable hard drives has really come down, and there are sales of them often. frys.com is a nice source in the U.S.–they have a sleek 500GB portable hard drive (a Signature Mini from Hitachi) available for $70 right now, and you sometimes can find lower prices. Black Friday this past year had some great sales on external portable hard drives.
