If you have your external hard drive connected to your computer at all times, it is a good idea to automate the backup process and have the drive back up your data as it changes, or every hour or so.
Still though, if you’ve ever wanted to use the same external hard drive with both Windows and MacOS, you know how big of a burden this process can be. Incidentally, the term "external hard drive ...
If the drive works in another port or on a different computer, you may need to do some extra work to fix the USB port. Usually, external drives just use Windows' built-in USB and hard disk drivers ...