Always just copied files manually to an external hard drive as I like to view the files easily and found when I used backup software I was left with a folder of saved data that wasn’t simply click to view. Presumed this was just in a format that made it easy for the computer to reinstall in the correct place if necessary .
Anyhow..I can find my way round a PC but little more and would like to use a simple piece of software to automate saving any changes whenever I plug in an external HD.
Any Recommendations/Advice much appreciated
thanks
Bill

w10>settings>update&security>backup

no idea how nice that will play with a drive that is plugged and unplugged though.

What OS?
Assuming Windows 10, there’s a feature called File History which copies everything from the folders you choose to another location (which can be an external drive or networked drive). The thing I like about it is that it creates a new copy every hour (if set up like this), so you can go back to the version you saved last week, or last month (given the space).

But one copy isn’t enough (especially if in the same location), so you should also be backing up, for example, to the cloud and somewhere else.

windows 10 . File history sounds interesting . Simpler the better. Think i want a differential copy rather than incremental as I believe the latter takes up loads more space?

Macrium Reflect v5.3.7277

Been using it for years now. That version above is from 2015 but I’ve not seen the need to upgrade or anything. Newer versions may be not so free or full of adverts or something but worth giving it a shot I guess.

Think i want a differential copy rather than incremental as I believe the latter takes up loads more space?

Correct, but hard disks are so cheap this shouldn’t be a problem, and things like photos don’t change, so will only be copied once.
Also, the folder history backup is just a copy of the original files (with a date stamp), not compressed into a single zip file, so it’s easy to find an individual file if you need it.

I use FBackup, nice and easy.

Also have a look at Google Drive, Dropbox and One Drive.