How to manage harddisk for dummys!!!!

Hi,

I'm a user wth capital "U" and I have a Mac Mini and problems with storage from my data.

I had two external harddisks from 250GB and used earlier on a PC.

After contacting Apple, they helped me to set one of the disks to Time Machine. The other one I used to put extra copies from photo's, videos and some documents.

Now, the disk for Time Machine only "ticks" when I put it on and the other one I can't write or copy my data to or from! I don't know for sure, but I thought that everthing was working after contacting the Apple helpdesk. The only change I made is installing Lion. However, I went to the store to get 2 new harddrives.

I wanted one to use as a Time Machine and an other one to put things on manualy.

I came out of the store with a Samsung 2.5 inch portable Hard Drive (1 TB, Hi speed USB) I bought this one because the seller told me that Samsung is very good, it was small en I could connect it without power. I thought, oke it automatically runs when I put on my computer, so that will be good.

I connect it to my Mini Mac, went to Time Machine and put in "on". I think yhis is working correct;y, however I do not know excactly what it does, further more than that Apple helpdesk told me, that when something will go wrong he could always help me to find things back when I leave it on.

For the second harddisk I bought a Samsung M3, 2TB, with power. However when I came home I discovered that I didn't had enough USB connections on my Mac Mini. Through this forum I get a tip to buy a powered Hub, which I did so.

In the store the salesman sold me a Hub but he also adviced me to get a harddrive with a FireWire 800 connection, because this would be much faster.

So I toke back the Samsung Disk and now have a "WD, My Book, 2TB" (with power)

While connecting however I find a manual with 87 pages!!! and two programs on it. It says that this harddisk was especially for use as a Time Machine(!)

When installing the programs, everything should go automatically. It looks very nice but I don't know if it is to dificult for dummy's?

In the long term I want to find a way to connect my video camera to my computer so that I can save the videos for my children and maby later on to try to make something nice of it. Because they told me that video take a lot of space I also bought this harddisk.

What is the best thing to do?

Can I still use the harddisk, simply to put something on that I want to keep after I installed the programs coming along with it? or shouldn't I install the programs and can I use it just manually?

Also on the back there are several connections: 2 FireWire 800, 1 Fire Wire 400 and USB.

Can I connect it to my Mac with the FireWire 800? and can I use the other FireWire 800 connection for my camera? to put my home videos directly on this disk? Or should I try to install it as Time Machine and bring back the portable harddisk to the shop and maby buy a second "My Book" ?

WHAT TO DO?????!!!!

I really hope that there are patient specialists on this forum, that can help me on the way.

kr,

pascal