mejustsayin, cheers for last comments. I have three drives from old laptops that I use as external storage, one is in an enclosure, other two are just for back-up and can be attached to a gadget on a USB cable. I have already explored the current laptop and very easy to remove the drive and connect to my gadget.
But easy enough moving my photos and other files onto my main (bought) external hard drive from my laptop whilst in safe mode. Just slow. Done about half of them so far!
Any recommendations on which new laptop I should buy. Is 8GB rather than 4GB RAM the way forward?