Back in the day I bought a fridge freezer combo, second hand, no handles. Used to be a built in model. As handles I used two magnets from full height drives, they were ludicrously strong and shaped like a little bit like a handle.
Full height drives were 3.25" high for those who are wondering.
It really depends how you define reliability. SD cards are physically nigh indestructible, but can show failure when overwritten often. Hence for one off backups it’s actually a good alternative. It will start showing problems when used as a medium that often writes and overwrites the same data often.
I would recommend backups on SD cards in an A/B fashion when you want to give a backup to someone else to store safely.