There are two ways to do this. Firstly, if you have USB 2.0, the easiest way to transfer data is by plugging your external hard drive into an available USB port on your HP laptop. After the files are moved, remove the external hard drive from your computer and reinstall it in its original slot for storage purposes.   Secondly, if you have a USB 3.0 connection, plug it in using one of these ports since this is also compatible with older file transfers (approximately 6x faster than USB 2). If you don't see any blue lights in front of the ports where you inserted your device/port-cable combo on both ends of the screen, then it means that they're not compatible.