I have a 500 GB partition on my hard drive where I store all my pictures using a folder structure (yes I'm running windows) H:yyyymmdd - description.  Under that last folder, I have a folder for my unedited original JPEG/CR2 files, a folder for my selected/edited files, and finally a folder for my Adobe Lightroom catalog.

Once the original files are copied to the hard drive, I then use Sync Toys 2 from Microsoft to backup my files to my network storage and run Sync Toys regularly to backup new & edited files.  Every 6 months or so, I create another backup on my USB drive.

As I have been late in beginning to use Lightroom and had tens of thousands of pictures, I never went back to create a master catalog with tags.  I'd rather spend my times working on new pictures than cataloging old stuff.  I'll do that when I retire in 25 years.