How to Transfer Files From Internal Hard Drive to an External Hard Drive

Things You’ll Need:

• External hard drive ( talk to your local computer expert to see what type of external hard drive will best suit your needs.)
• Depending on what type of computer you have you can purchase external hard drives directly from your computer provider (eg. www.dell.com) or from a office supply store in your area - Staples, Office D
• Have your computer or laptop (and the external drive handy) while you follow these steps

Step 1:
To pick an external hard drive - base it on what types of storage needs you have. If you have a lot of images, music files, or videos an external drive with lots of storage space on it would be ideal. If you are transferring documents and paperwork, a smaller one would work for that.

Step 2:
Most external hard drives are connected by a USB ( Universal Serial Bus ) cable and most computers are compatible with them. This type would be your best bet (in my opinion) and easiest to find.

Step 3:
To transfer data, plug the USB cable into the correct port. Usually your computer will know that it has a new drive attached and a pop up box will alert you. It will scan it to determine what to do with the new connection and your computer will assign it a drive letter ( eg Drive C:, and so forth.) This will allow you to transfer data to the external hard drive just like you would move files around on your computers internal hard drive.

Step 4:

Picture courtesy of www.oreillynet.com

Once you have the USB cable plugged into your computers port (and the other end plugged into the external drive) you can now start saving files you would like on the external drive. You can save them just on the external hard drive or you can use it as a back up.

Step 5:

Picture courtesy of www.microsoft.com

Open the item(s)or folder(s) you would like to transfer or save on your external hard drive. There are two ways to save them to the external hard drive 1.) If you only have a couple of things to save, you can open each item, click on file - save as - and choose the letter/drive that was previously assigned to your external hard drive. This will save it to the external hard drive.

Step 6:

This photo is just an example....your external hard drive will have its own letter assigned to it.

2.) If you have large files or alot of them to transfer. A window will be open for your external hard drive and it will show you what has been saved on your external hard drive (or it will be blank if there is nothing saved on it.) You can click on the item you want moved (holding the right mouse button down) and drag the item over to the window for your external hard drive. You can do this with as many files as necessary. You can select a few files at a time by holding down the shift key and clicking on the items you want to drag to the new location.

Step 7:
Be sure once you are done saving the files to your external hard drive, that you disconnect properly. If this is not done, it could damage your hard drive and the files on it. Down on the right hand side of your screen you will see (usually green) flashing arrow. Click on that to open you USB tool box. You will need to stop the hardware device, click on the stop button.

Step 8:
It will ask you to confirm the device to be stopped. Make sure the item that is highlighted is the USB Mass Storage device and click ok to confirm.

Step 9:
You will see a comment pop up at the bottom that will say Safe to Remove Hardware and it is now ok to disconnect the external hard drive USB cable.

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