- [Instructor] Working with an external storage drive,
like an external hard drive or USB memory stick,
is almost the same as working with files
on your main system drive.
But first, we should talk about what happens
when you connect an external drive to your computer.
I have a USB memory stick,
so I'm going to connect that to my computer now.
The first time you connect an external drive,
you will probably see this notification
asking you what you want to do
when you connect an external drive.
Now you can click on this and then you can make your choice.
So maybe you want File Explorer to open
and show you the contents of that drive.
So you could select this.
And when you connect to drive in the future,
it will open a File Explorer window.
Now if you change your mind later,
it's very easy to change that selection.
You just need to go into settings.
So I'll go to the start menu to settings.
On the left side,
I'll go to Bluetooth and devices
and scroll to the autoplay section
where you can change what happens
when you connect an external drive.
And you've got your options here in this menu.
Okay so now, let's open that drive
and work with the files on it.
So, of course, I'll go into File Explorer.
And on the sidebar on the left,
I can see that external drive right here.
Or if you go to This PC,
you can see all of the storage drives connected
to your computer.
And you can find the one you're looking for.
You can double-click it to open it up.
And from here, you can treat this
just like any other storage location
with two main differences.
First, you may remember if you simply drag something
from one folder to another,
the default action is that it will move that thing.
But if you drag something from one storage drive to another,
like if I were to drag this folder from my external drive
to the documents folder on my internal drive,
it's going to copy it, not move it.
Now the second thing is that when you delete files
or folders from some external drives,
they do not go to the recycle bin.
They are deleted immediately.
Let's see that.
I'm going to select this folder
and I'll click the delete button up here at the top.
But you see, if that happens, it will warn you.
It's telling me if I delete this,
it will be instantly deleted
and will not go to the recycle bin.
So you'll get that warning and you'll know what's happening.
For now, I'll just click Yes
and that folder is completely gone.
Now if you've used a Mac or older versions of Windows,
you may remember that you had to properly eject a drive
before unplugging it on those systems,
but that's not true in Windows 11.
When you're finished with an external drive,
just make sure you don't have any files open
that are stored on that drive
and make sure you're not in the middle of copying something
to or from that drive,
and then, you can just unplug that drive
when you're finished.
With those few exceptions,
everything that you would do on an external drive works
the same as on your main storage drive.