Transferring internal hard drive in external

I just bought an external hard drive Transcend (500 GB) because I have no place in the internal HDD (80GB). I need to transfer all that I have on the internal (software, my documents, ect ..) in the external. I tried to do with the software provided with " Nero Essentials Back up " it works, but I find myself with a lot of archive files that I can not open Therefore no interest for me because I want to have access to everything.
So now, I need your help to make up space on my internal software or other ..

Thanks

To transfer your documents a small copy paste documents will do, with respect to certain program will probably relocate on your external hard drive files as important to their operation have stored on your internal HDD which would make the program unusable.

For others go to programs and files simply tranfer program folder on your external HD and it should work. For all attention.

After I do not know if there are programs that would ensure that the software can be transferred anyway.

So documents, it was good.
But for the rest, I can not simply copy the entire internal HDD?

Yes there are ways to make functional software from an external hard drive, but transfer rates are generally limited mainly on a USB device operation is far from satisfactory.

The ideal is to use the external hard drive as storage device and to transfer all your personal files and all your records and let the software installed on the PC and possibly indicate software to save documents and files the external drive. Remember to make another redundant backup copy on DVD or on another hard drive of your documents even if it does not seem essential because a hard disk can fail.

For the rest you could do a full backup that could allow you to restore your system hard disk failure with Acronis True Image 2009, Norton Ghost or similar software, but such data would be available only at a restaurant just like with the Nero software.