What is the best form of managing data? Do you think the external hard drive method is better, safer and more protected than the cloud type?

No. The cloud type is more safe and secure. The external hard drive can be stolen, tampared with or lost. Eteternal hard disks may lose its CIA as opposed to the cloud which has strong encyption methods.

for me more safe and protected by using cloud type than external hard drive. 

Cloud type is much better, safer and protected as far as compared with External Hards drive because Cloud type is intect with your personel Email with highly secured password etc and different techniques can be used to make it more secure. Otherwise External Hard Drive is not so much safer comparatively.

The best form of managing data should comply with the  information security policy and procedures, which should be approved by senior management. accordingly we can decide what is the best approach to manage data.

The external hard drive have a much more linear pricing structure than the cloud services, in money terms

For confidential data, better to have dedicated encrypted file server with backup function.

For public data, best solution is the Cloud storage with encryption..

External hard drive method is better and Less Risk of hackers to access as it uses efficient security protocols

The hard drive method is the legacy forms of data storage which are not secure as compared to cloud platform where data can be retrieved even if your machine is dead, if the hard drive is corrupt or stolen there are limited ways of getting back your data.

Until it crashes or is stolen with your laptop.  One needs to look at the data, its importance, availability requirements and then devise a strategy that works for your environment.