External hard drive question.

redrose_3

amcluesent wrote:

>and clicked the back up box. It did the rest.<

A google suggests Western Digital USB drives ship with this Retrospect Express backup utility.

Rather than a backup process, I would go for SyncToy. It's free and works fine, just copies the files without creating a backup archive.

I use Acronis True Image Home 10 to do my Nightly backups to two spare hard drives, as it compresses the data it doesn't take as long or use as much space and touch wood it has not let me down yet!. Take a look at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Tony.

espresso

Open windoze Explore, Select a folder, Right click Copy, Navigate to your external hard drive and Paste to where you want to store the folder/s.

espresso

redrose wrote:

I use Acronis True Image Home 10 to do my Nightly backups.......

The OP does not want to create back-ups but simply copy his files across to an external drive so that they can still be easily accessed.

:rolleyes:

Dunkyboy_2

thanks espresso , redrose, and everyone else.
can i just say, is Backing up files different to Storing files,

this is confusing me,

ManAtHome

Backing-up and Storing (copying) are essentially the same thing - keeping copies in a physically separate location. Back-up programs normally also compress the files to attempt to take up less space than the originals - not really needed these days for external disks, but may be useful for CD/DVD.

redrose_3

Dunkyboy wrote:

espresso, you have it in one.......:j

but HOW, do i simply copy them across....i am a computer muppet.:o
all my pictures are in folders in My Pictures , so how do i copy or drag them into this new hard drive please- (be gentle now, it is Christmas)

Open Windows Explorer using your Start (otherwise known as the WINdows key) and press 'E'. Go to at the folder you want to copy - select the files you want to copy, using the CONTrol A key to select all the files. Open another copy of Explorer on your external drive and then make sure that the correct folder is highlighted and press CONTrol V to copy the files.

Hope this is easy to understand as I tend to be a bit techie.

Sorry if this is the case.

Tony.

Dunkyboy_2

thankyou ManatHome, i think i have the gist of it now.
What i have done is copyed over my files to the external hard drive and on the way the WD software i have used has compressed these files to save space, or something like this.
So i need to delete everything off the new hard drive and start again using the advice from espresso, and hope-fully that should be it..

I shall try again........