Backup to hard drive

I bought an external hard drive (Medion brand, bought it in Aldi) a few weeks ago. Plugged it in to a spare USB port and it worked fine, I am able to save files, documents etc to it by clicking "save as" and finding the location of the drive.
My question is, how do I save my entire Outlook setup, folders etc, to the hard drive? The last time my PC went belly up I lost all my email addresses and a lot of emails that I really needed to save. I'd like to be able to copy the Outlook stuff to the hard drive now and again, but I have no idea how to do it. I assume it's simple enough, anyone done it?

Google for info on Outlook backup strategies and solutions.

Simplest short answer is:

- In outlook Export your address book (normally to an excel/csv file) and copy this file to the external drive

- In Start / Search - find a *.pst file - that is all your emails - and copy that file to the drive too.

Thanks for the info. I was born too soon for a lot of this stuff!