Replying to HELP ME SMART NEWSCHOOLERS

ok media and arts...
this is media helping arts...
my external drive broke a while ago with all my photos, videos and backups on it.
i plugged it in today and its barely working, so i wanna back up as much as i can. (then get a new drive)
i have a 1 TB WD "My Book" drive and its being a bitch,
it wont let me just drag the files onto it, i have installed this user backup thing, but its just not working.

has anyone used these? does anyone know whats up? should i portion it? fully restore it? how do i do any of that? (disk utility... but gah)

any/all help is very apreciated, please help NS

broken drive is just under 500GB
working drive is 1TB
and i have little room left on my macbook (macbook pro 10.5.8)

in advance THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU