How does an exterior hard drive work?
Think of an external hard drive like a normal hard drive working
outside your computer, they work very much in the same way.
Normally (unless you are using a SCSI hard drive), they can be
connected to your computer via a Firewire or USB connection. If you
have a key-drive(aka USB memory stick),they work like a miniature
external hard drive in the sense that they store date in an
external format; an external hard drive is just like a large
key-drive. With both a keydrive and an external hard drive, you
simply connect it to your computer, and access its files. When you
want to access your internal hard drive, you go to MyComputer and
then select the C: drive; The external hard drive is a similar
process, you select it's icon (located either on the desktop or
MyComputer) and then you can access its files like a normal hard
drive. You can drag files out of it onto your desktop, or
alternatively, drag files into it to transfer files from your
computer.