External Hard Drive question

I intend on buying an External HD to back up all our photos(8000+) for security reasons. I am at present running XP, but in a few months I will be getting a new PC with Vista.

Question:

Just to get this right, I can copy all files to Ext HD, then copy files back into new PC? Even though they were originally 'made' using WinXP and new environment will be Vista?

Thanks
G

 

Yup it would be the same as using a flash drive as long as your external hd is compatible with vista