I think I made a really big mistake....Please help

I need your help.  Not really great with computers.  I purchased a WD  1 TB Passport portable drive.  When I connected it to my computer it asked me if I wanted to do a backup.  I selected  the “yes” option.  Several hours later I received a message that the backup was incomplete and that it could not be complteted because windows could not create a zip  file.  It disappeared before I coud copy the entire message.  I clicked to open the portable drive and none of my information was there.  However, druing this entire process I kept receiving messages such as "70% finished, 80% finished until the end when I received the error message.

I am now trying to do  a copy and paste (The files, picts etc from my “C” drive to my new portable drive.  Did I make a mistake by doing this?  If so how do I correct it?

What is the difference between a back up and “copy and paste”?

Thanks for your help

Hi there, it sounds like you are using the Windows backup.

On the other hand, the difference between a “backup” and “copy and paste” are that a backup just means having your data on a least to completely separate places, in case one source of the information fails then the other one has your files.

“Copy and paste” is a method to manually copy files to another place on the computer or external drive, so if you are using the copy/paste method ((there are several ways to do it, I like to right-click with my mouse)) you can either be backing up files ((if you leave the original files where they belong as well and don’t erase them)) or moving out files to a new location if you erase the original files after the copy is made.