Backing up videos and photos to an external storage device

Once your photos and videos have been copied from your tablet or smartphone to a computer (read that blog post), you can back them up to an external storage device such as a flash drive.

Any computer related task or objective begins, continues and ends with conceptual understanding.

In this example, we are going to “copy some stuff” from Point A (a pictures folder on a computer) to Point B (an external storage device).

Physical connection

It begins with a physical connection, which in this example, is inserting a USB flash drive into a USB port on a computer.

It’s important to make sure you have inserted the device or cable into the correct port on a computer (which usually is a matter of Cinderella’s slipper)

Find the external storage device

If the external device is in good working order and there are no compatibility issues, you should be able to open it on your computer.

USB flash drive circled 🖍️

How you can open a flash drive will depend on which computer you are using or more accurately which operating system is on the computer you are using.

Search for what you need

On a Windows 10 computer, you can access an external storage device (and all the other storage locations on your computer) through the This PC window.

As a side note, you can search for anything on a computer through its search box 🔎

(Very) basic procedure to back up files

Once you can open a flash drive on your computer, you can simply select and then copy and paste whichever files you want to back up.

Nuts & bolts will vary

The nuts and bolts of how to do this will vary depending on which computer you are using and how you elect to do it (e.g. through window menus, context menus, keyboard shortcuts) but a clear objective and methodical procedure will always serve you very well.

Think about what you want to do and then look around for a way to do it.

Navigate to the folder on your computer that has the files you wish to back up, select the files you wish to back up and then copy them (proceeding methodically while looking for visual cues such as icons and menu selections).

Quick tip: you can select all the files in a folder with a menu selection or by holding down the ctrl key on your keyboard as you single-click each file that you wish to select.

After you have selected and copied the files that you wish to back up, you can navigate to the external storage device and paste them:

Context matters! It’s important to know where you are (in this example within the USB disk) or which folder you actually have open before you do anything.

Eject the external storage device

You should eject a flash drive (or any other storage device) before physically detaching it from your computer (in order to prevent damaging the storage device).

Using a context menu (right mouse click) to Eject the external storage device.