My new PC has only a 500gb ssd and a 4tb hdd.
how can I handle putting the back up data on the new PC?
There are several ways of doing it.
Maybe something like installing the root directory and therefore the distribution on the main SSD and the Home folder partition in the secondary HDD? I did that once and it worked fine.
Or, install it all on one place sort of like I have it:
Main distribution including Root and Home in one partition on the main SSD and have your backups go to the HDD. This seems like it would be a good way to use btrfs perhaps by having the snapshots go to the HDD and you still get the benefit of a fast SSD for everything. Additional games or files could be put on the HDD too.
I have 3 drives. I have Windows 11 on the primary NVme and LMDE 6 on the secondary SSD. I have backups go to the 3rd drive which is an HDD and I keep additional downloads there too as a scratchpad.
I have a 4th external SSD running Pop!_OS (used to be one of my Zorin installations).
It's my nirvana. 
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I would have as @C141ZorinOS has suggested, root file system on SSD and /home on the 4 Tb. We do not know what types of data you are saving (e.g., video files can take up an awful lot of space in no time).
I would however split your 4 Tb into 2. On the first 2 Tb make /home, and name the second 2 TbBackup or simply Data. I would format all partitions to Ext4. Next install timeshift via the terminal to get the latest version:
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:teejee2008/timeshift
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install timeshift
enter each sudo line separately and press enter. (You will be asked for your login password after copying the first sudo command, once done you won't need to enter it again for the following two.)
The default setting backs up your system but not your /home folder, you need to change this in settings. Ext4 is my preference as it has proven to be more stable than other file systems, but this is my personal choice. Timeshift does support BTRFS too.
thank you for the answer I'll do the first suggestion 
What are the exact steps for having the root on the ssd and the home folder on the hdd btw?
You can find a lot of videos online how to create partitions.
Basically, you have to manually create your partitions for root (/) on the SSD and then the (/home) partition on the HDD.
That way when the OS is running, all files/folders for the OS are on the faster SSD and config files and personal files are on the slower/larger HDD. It works well but I change it up every so often. I like this option because you limit the read/writes to the SSD while emails, downloads, personal files, etc go to the HDD. Plus, you can back up your OS to the HDD with Timeshfit or some other recovery or back up tool. I did this on my Windows set up whereby the OS is on the NVME and the personal files and emails go to the HDD.
This works great if you have the extra drives. On my laptop I have two 256GB SSDs and originally it had the Windows 11 OS on the first SSD and the second SSD was for emails, back up, and personal files. Now I have LMDE on the second SSD instead.
Good luck.
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Oh....its all manually......
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