External harddrive

[Garylee]

First, as I have explained before, I am not very computer literate.
I have been told that I need to save all of my files to an external harddrive, wipe my computer's harddrive, and reinstall my operating system. Okay I bought an external harddrive, hooked it to my computer, and tried to save my files. When I would click on a Word file, it would not click and open. My screen would get dimmer and dimmer, and dimmer. After three or four seconds, the file would open. When I tried to save the file to the external harddrive. I would get messages that said that the "H:" drive was unrecognizable and that the file was corrupted. But when I tried to save the same file to a flashdrive, there was no problem.
Does anybody have any ideas what I am doing wrong?

[Jay Freedman]

First, don't try to use Word to "save" the files to any other drive. Instead, use Windows Explorer to copy the files from one drive to the other. You can simply drag the icon of a folder to the icon of the external drive, and Windows will copy the folder and all the files it contains.

Before you start to do that, make sure that Windows Explorer can recognize and display the external drive. If it doesn't show up, you may have to format the drive (although they usually come from the factory already formatted).

[stuck]

...I have been told that I need to save all of my files to an external harddrive, wipe my computer's harddrive, and reinstall my operating system...

Have you been told this because your computer has been infected with ransomware? If you have been infected with ransomware then it is useless to try and rescue your data files by copying them to an external drive because they will already be encrypted / unusable.

Ken

[Garylee]

Thank you for the replies. I really appreciate the help.

I haven't been told that I have any infected files.

[viking33]

Thank you for the replies. I really appreciate the help.

I haven't been told that I have any infected files.

Have you tried Jay's suggestion yet?
If not, That would be your next step.

[Garylee]

To be very honest with you, I don't really know how to drag from one folder to another. I guess I have never done that before.

Funny story - When I entered the first grade, we were the first class in our school that did not use ink wells. We got to use fountain pens. Yea, I am old.

[Rudi]

Hi Garylee,

This small YouTube tutorial should help you to copy the files to your external drive. Have a look at the lesson (esp. the last part where the instructor shows how to copy a whole folder to the external drive) and then give it a go. You need to locate your files or folder in Windows Explorer (as seen in the video) and ensure to send those to your external drive.

If you do not have specific files you want to copy, you can choose to backup your entire user folder. Generally all files you create will be in your "user" folder. The following video shows you how to backup this entire user folder (which should cover all bases if you have many different files to copy or if you are simply not sure where the files are.)

[Garylee]

Thank you for replying to my question. It really helped

[mrjimphelps]

Garylee:

Once you get everything straight, you might want to consider subscribing to an online backup service, such as Carbonite or Mozy. After an initial backup of your computer, your computer stays backed up whenever you are online. Backups are effortless, because you don't have to do anything; it all happens in the background.