This is an ongoing challenge for may of us, I have folders set up on my HDD named by places, family, macro, published, WIPs, completed on hold, RAW, work files etc etc. I then have these folders in my favourites panel in adobe bridge where I can easily move them, copy them or do basic export / resize and such, with subfolders for years. I then have a couple of external HDD that I back up every so often, and another specific HDD where my Mac time capsule backs up every hour.
Bridge is great for me as I can batch rename images in a few seconds - I usually name them by <> year <> specific place, client, event, person, project <> number
I personally do it this way as I hate folders within folders within folders, and would much rather have all my 2021_Thailand_images in one folder - I can then assign keywords in Bridge to batches of images to make it even easier to search for specific or general images.
It all depends on your work flow how you get things set up but I have folders for RAW, WIPs, completed on hold & then when I am finished with an image I move to the final folder where it will stay and delete the historical copies in other folders.