Good advice.
Ventoy is an interesting app to create bootable USB sticks that I don't know if you've heard of -- ventoy[.]net
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files.
With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files to the USB drive and boot them directly.
You can copy many files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them (screenshot).
x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way.
Most type of OS supported (Windows/WinPE/Linux/ChromeOS/Unix/VMware/Xen...)
770+ image files are tested (list), 90%+ distros in distrowatch.com supported (details),
I know I've mentioned Rufus in the past -- it now supports Secure Boot {yea!} rufus[.]ie
The paid versions of Paragon Hard Disk Mgr. & Macrium Reflect create bootable USB sticks with utilities for migrating an OS to new/different hardware and/or repair the boot files. I don't use them often but they've been a lifesaver once or twice. Microsoft's WinPE is useful since many portable apps will work using it, but it requires over 6GB (!) for the ADK to create a WinPE USB stick.
Storing backups *reliably* is Very often overlooked among home users and small biz. External USB hard disks are not as reliable as they should be... I prefer to use a regular hard disk & put it in an external housing or use a drive dock. That makes it easy to swap the drive to a new housing if the electronics inside go bad, which they can & sometimes will do. The hard disks in many of the external drives you can buy don't have a standard interface, plus the housing is not designed to make taking the hard disk out easy. While 2.5" [i.e. laptop] hard disks aren't *too bad*, depending on make & model regular 3.5" hard disks can get too hot without active cooling, leading to data corruption &/or failure. Restoring a backup you may be asking the drive to operate at maximum for a long, sustained period of time, and that's when/where many external drives that seemed OK will stop working. Nowadays external housings with fans for 3.5" hard disks are rare & somewhat expensive, so I use a drive dock with a 6" desk fan. An NAS may actually have slower transfer rates than USB, and they're pretty expensive right now, but 2 NAS disks set up with RAID for mirroring is probably the most reliable for home use.
The best option for long-term storage are DVDs. Even the special, expensive Blu-ray blanks designed for longevity can't match them, while regular BD blanks might sometimes not last a year. Cloud storage is great, but there have been data center outages where customers lost their data. You can burn a few DVDs OTOH, maybe give one or two to friends or relatives to store, put one in a safe deposit box, or use a post office box, and you have some coverage in case of disasters like floods or fire. Many PCs & laptops don't have DVD drives nowadays... You can buy a small interface that plugs into the back of a regular DVD drive, & plug an electrical adapter & USB cable into that -- I got the interface, adapter, & cable for $10 on Amazon -- or you can buy a smaller laptop drive in an external housing, or buy the drive & housing separately & put them together yourself. While I paid $14 for an external DVD drive like that, prices have gone up lately -- I think I've seen them for $25-$30 recently.
