I am new to the site and having difficulty zeroing in. Can anyone give me step by step instructions as to how to back up my data to an external hardrive.

You just "drag and drop" the files you want to copy:

With the external plugged in, go to My Computer, then double click on the drive letter that represents your external drive.

Now resize that window to about half your screen size.

Now open My Documents (or where ever it is that you have the files you want to back up). Resize the window so that you can see both it and the window for the hard drive.

Select the files and folders you want to backup. To select more than one, SINGLE click on one, then hold down on the Control button and single click on more.

With the file or files all blue, RIGHT click on any of them and hold down on the button while "dragging" them over to the open window for the hard drive.

You'll get a little pop up message where you need to choose copy, NOT MOVE.

That will copy all those files to your external hard drive.

More info is needed about what you want to backup and why. There are several options to doing backups depending on your needs. Do you have any backup software? Some external drives come with such software.