You can always go to MyEtherWallet.com and generate a new wallet. You will be given a private key which you can later use for accessing your wallet. The best thing about it that you can do it even while being offline so there is less risk that some kind of malware steals your key. After you save your private key, you can encrypt it using for example VeraCrypt and store it on multiple external drives. Hardware wallets are much more convenient because all you have to do is to plug in a hardware wallet your computer and use it with MEW. I use my TREZOR One for small amounts of cryptocurrencies in case I needed to spend them immediately.