Mac HD back-up to external hard drive Troubleshooting Help!

Last night my MBP was working fine. This morning it would not boot past the white screen + apple + turning wheel + a status bar that only got about 1/5 the way shaded, then disappeared.
What I have done so far:
Command+R: wow. This actually made something else appear! Into Mac OS X Utilities. I currently have no Time Machine backups so that's not an option. Cannot reinstall Mac OS X Lion because, #1) because the drives are locked and #2) I don't want to do that until I have the piece of mind of having everything backed up.
Which leads me to. . .
I just went and bought an external hard drive: WD My Passport Essential SE 1TB. And I am trying to follow apple's instructions to backup the hard drive:
+New Image> Macintosh HD Backup from 3/19> Save to Passport
Goes through about 30 seconds of starting to copy then a pop-up window that says >cannot create ". . .dmg" (error-61)
Please help!
And once I can back my system up, should I erase the hard drive or JUST reformat it? 
First issue with my mac. It's like the first time your puppy gets sick...

    I know how important it is to backup your information, Barbaraholch. If you are using an external hard drive to back up your iPhone 5, you would need to use iTunes on a computer. You would first need to ensure that iTunes will be syncing your phone to the hard drive. For assistance with iTunes, you can contact Apple at 800-275-2273.
AndreaS_VZW
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