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Free-up space on your PC by moving files from your local drives to an external device.
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Quick reference
Archive Files to an External Hard Drive
Backup files from your PC to an external device like a hard drive or USB stick.
When to use
We backup files to an external device like a hard drive or USB stick whenever we want to keep a copy of important data but don't have access to cloud storage.
Instructions
We can backup any files and folders that exist on our PC to an external device. For example, we might have a large music library that we'd like to backup but the Music folder is not included in the standard OneDrive cloud backup. We could choose to backup this folder to an external hard drive or USB stick.
Backup to External Devices
- Plug the hard drive or USB stick into a port on the PC or laptop.
Windows 11 will automatically recognize the new device. We will see a pop-up alert in the corner of the screen.
- Press Win+E to open File Explorer.
- Click on This PC.
- In Devices and drives, we should be able to see the external device.
Copy Files
We can backup files to the device in the same way we move files between folders.
- Navigate to the folder that contains the files to backup.
- Select the files.
- From File Explorer, drag and drop the files to the external device.
The files will be copied as opposed to moved.
Eject a Device
Once we have finished copying files to the external device, we need to eject it correctly. It is not recommended to simply unplug the device as this can cause problems down the track and cause the device to fail.
- In File Explorer, right-click on the device.
- Click Eject.
Once the device has disappeared from This PC, we can safely unplug it.
Login to download- 00:04 In the previous lesson,
- 00:05 I showed you how you can backup your files to OneDrive cloud storage.
- 00:10 And that is by far the recommended method, your files are automatically backed up and
- 00:15 they're stored safely on the Microsoft servers.
- 00:19 However, there might be some situations where
- 00:21 backing up to the cloud is isn't something you can do.
- 00:25 So maybe you don't have access to cloud storage, or
- 00:27 the files that you want to store are too large for the storage limit that you have.
- 00:32 Or it might just be that you prefer to have your files stored outside
- 00:36 of the cloud.
- 00:37 So in this lesson, we're just going to take a quick look at how simple it is to
- 00:41 move your files from your PC onto an external device.
- 00:45 Now I would say that if you have quite a lot of files to move or
- 00:48 if you have quite large files, then you're probably going to back them up or
- 00:53 store them on an external hard drive.
- 00:55 Most external hard drives these days are plug and
- 00:58 play, meaning they connect via a USB and you simply plug them into the USB port and
- 01:03 your Windows 11 system will recognize them.
- 01:07 Another type of device that you could use is a USB stick and that's actually what
- 01:11 I'm going to use in this lesson simply because it's small and easy to use.
- 01:16 But the process here is exactly the same, regardless of the device,
- 01:19 whether it's a USB stick or an external hard drive.
- 01:23 Windows 11 recognizes them in the same way, and
- 01:26 we move our files to them in exactly the same way as well.
- 01:29 So let's start out by opening up File Explorer, and
- 01:32 I'm going to press Windows key+E.
- 01:35 Now in order to see any devices that you have connected to your PC,
- 01:39 you need to click on this PC.
- 01:42 If you recall, this is where we can see our standard folders and
- 01:45 it's also where we can see any devices and drivers.
- 01:48 So currently it's just showing the C drive of my PC.
- 01:52 Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to plug in the USB stick into one of
- 01:56 the ports on my laptop.
- 01:57 Notice as soon as I plug that in, I get a little pop-up message in the bottom corner
- 02:02 letting me know that the USB drive has been recognized.
- 02:06 And you can now see under Devices and Drives, I have USB drive,
- 02:09 and it's given it one of those letters, in this case, the D drive.
- 02:14 If I want to access the USB stick and see what files I currently have on there,
- 02:19 I simply need to double click on the drive.
- 02:21 Now this is a brand new USB stick.
- 02:23 So I just have some executables and
- 02:26 a PDF file on here from the company that provided the USB stick.
- 02:32 And of course you can delete these if you want to.
- 02:34 Now what about if I want to move files and folders to this USB drive?
- 02:39 Well, that process is very simple.
- 02:42 What I'm going to do is I'm going to jump across to My Documents folder, and
- 02:46 let's go into our Clients folder and into Training Tech.
- 02:50 So maybe I want to move all of these files in here onto the USB stick.
- 02:56 What I would generally tend to do here is open the files as I have done and then
- 03:01 from my folder list, I'm going to go all the way down to where we have USB Drive.
- 03:07 Then it's a simple case of selecting the files and
- 03:10 because I want to move everything, I'm just going to do a Ctrl+A to select all,
- 03:15 and then I can simply drag and drop them onto the USB files.
- 03:19 Now notice it's going to do a copy as opposed to a move this time.
- 03:24 I'm not holding down the Ctrl key,
- 03:26 that's just the default action when you drag and drop.
- 03:28 So when I let go, it's going to run through and it's going to copy all of
- 03:33 those files across but I'm going to retain the original in the original folder.
- 03:38 So now notice what I have, if I click on USB Drive,
- 03:42 I can see that I have my zip folder and then I have all of those files.
- 03:48 So it's very similar to simply moving files around between folders, and
- 03:52 as I mentioned,
- 03:53 this process is exactly the same if you plug in an external hard drive.
- 03:57 When you go to This PC,
- 03:58 you're going to see something that looks very similar to this.
- 04:01 It might be assigned the letter D, it might be assigned the letter E, but
- 04:05 it will say external hard drive and then whatever the brand name is,
- 04:08 Toshiba or Samsung or something like that.
- 04:10 And you can simply drag and drop your files to store them off.
- 04:14 Now, the final thing to mention about these external devices is
- 04:17 it's important to make sure that you eject them in the correct way.
- 04:21 I know what a lot of people do is simply just unplug the external drive or
- 04:26 unplug the USB stick, but that can sometimes cause problems.
- 04:31 So it's always best to get into the habit of ejecting these correctly.
- 04:35 In general, what you need to do is come into This PC, right-click on the device,
- 04:40 and then within that contextual menu, you have an Eject option.
- 04:45 Once that device has been removed from the devices and
- 04:50 drives area, you know it's safe to unplug the drive.
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