New customer here and confused. My Passport for Mac questions

I bought the 1T just because I wanted to save photo’s and home movies.  I assume when I plugged it in to my Mac it proceeded to copy my whole system since I wasn’t prompted?  also how to I see what is on My Passport? I saved it as my 

Time Machine and when I click on the Icon it gives me the backup file folder and the apps selection.  I click on backup, it has my Mac file filder and clicking that leads to nothing.  Is my system REALLY there…that is the question…or do I have a parasite attached to my computer doing absolutely nothing but sucking power.  :)

I was hoping I could pick and choose what to back up.  If I can’t can anyone recommend a backup system where I can or a different way of doing it.

Thanks!!!

Laura

Your external hard drive won’t perform any particular action on its own as it is governed by your computer. You can drag and drop / copy and paste files into it from most folders in your system in order to have a secondary copy. You can also link your hard drive to Apple Time Machine:

http://www.apple.com/support/timemachine/

Once a Time Machine backup is completed, you will see an encrypted Time Machine sparsebundle file that can only be (Normally) accessed through Time Machine in case of an emergency.

Regards,