Re: An appeal for help
Mr Magoo, I don't know how much data you have and want to store externally, but I suspect they may contain many pictures!
I can tell you what I do, routinely, to back up all my work.
Firstly, I'd download Dropbox and Microsoft's One Drive. Both are free! Every time I create or change a file, I save it to both of those storage sites (I keep links on my desktop). You can do this by clicking on the file and 'saving to' Dropbox or One Drive. That takes only a couple of extra mouse clicks in addition to the usual 'save' command in the programme itself. Incidentally, you don't really need BOTH of those, but I'm a 'belt and braces' man.
The minor drawback is that both of those two online sites are limited in the amount you can keep on them, so I also have two small external hard drives (again, one would be enough, but 'belt and braces' again!). Each is much larger than the online storage sites - 500Gb and 1Tb. They connect quite simply by plugging into a USB port and the computer should recognise them instantly.
What I do periodically, perhaps once a month (but that will depend on how much you save to the online storage sites), I download everything on the computer to both of them using the File History software built in to Windows 10 (it's in Control Panel). I does everything itself really and is easy to use. Having done that, I empty out One Drive and Dropbox ready to receive every new file I create or files that I change.
I've been doing this for years now.
The online storage sites are very quick to save individual files (almost instantaneous); updating everything to the external hard drives takes a lot longer, up to an hour in my case, but the other option is just to copy everything listed in your Dropbox or One Drive folder directly to the hard drive(s), which is much quicker.
I've written a lot (!), but I hope this is of help. If I've said anything you don't understand, please ask and I'll do my best to explain further.