External hard drives after transferring files can they be deleted from the compu

[sarahlouise92]

Hello, after putting all my music, photos etc from my PC onto an external hard drive, can they then be deleted from the computer? or will they come off the hard drive too?

 

[WyomingKnott]

Answer number one: You can delete the source files; what is on the external drive is a totally independent copy.

Answer number two: Don't. If you drop the hard drive, you will lose your only copy of these files. If they are important to you, have two copies. If you need the space, buy an extra external drive to back them up, or burn them to DVDs, so that you have a backup copy.