My old computer completely crashed and i thought i had all my work and patterns backed up on a external hard drive. On my old computer i could plug in the hard drive and see all the files i had saved there.

I got my new computer and installed the Designer program and went to import all my saved files they were gone. They do not show up on my new computer from my external hard drive. My old computer had windows 7 professional and my new computer has windows 8? I would think that a document file would pull up on either system shouldn't it?

My question is how or in what format can i save all my patterns so i don't loose them again if this happens in the future?
I have spent the last 2 days trying to find and upload most of the patterns that i had. There is no way to do this with all the projects that i created and made as you well know!

Any help would be grateful.
Chad