Using existing external drives (am a new iMac user) & photos

I am a new convert to iMac from PC this weekend. Have searched support questions but not finding a match.
What I have is two portable external drives - a 160 gig for all my photos (all sorted into annual folders then monthly folders, close to its limit around 140gig), and a 300 gig drive for "everything else" ie movies, music, documents etc etc.
I have always kept everything on these drives - never been a fan of keeping anything on actual computers.
Anyway - today I downloaded photos from camera to the "finder".
Then I plugged in the 160 gig drive and in a separate Finder screen I have tried to create a Feb sub folder in my 2012 folder. So I can drag or copy todays photos into it from the mac.
But a) its not letting me create a new folder - actually I cant see any options to do so.
b) its not letting me drag or copy paste the photos into any folder on the external 160 drive.
Any tips - please in really plain english as after 20 years of Window use I feel like I am learning Apple english today. Its all a bit foreign !
A few people on facebook suggested "reformatting" the external drives but to be honest that scare the heck out of me as to me reformatting basically means risking losing everything on those drives.
Another problem to do with the photos I downloaded off the camera today:
What is known as "properties" in Windows usually shows me exactly what date and time the photo was take, when it was uploaded, and when it was edited.
Half the photos I downloaded today off the camera do show their Info as that - but half show their info as "today" and I know they are several weeks old.
As I rely on the integrity of the photos "properties for all my sorting - I am not sure how or why it is removing the correct information and replacing it with "today".
Any help for a real newbie is appreciated.
Thanks

NTFS (New Technology File System) is the standard file system of Windows NT, including Windows 2000,Windows XP, and all their successors to date.
NTFS supersedes the FAT file system as the preferred file system for Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.
SW = software. Do NOT use software to convert your data.
The Mac operating system uses HFS Extended (Journaled), and until you reformat your external hard drive to that (using Disk Utlity) you will not achieve full functionality.
Obviously that should have been done before you installed anything so you now need to clear all data off the external hard drive (by copying to another hard drive already formatted correctly) and then copying back. Easier still, format a new hard drive correctly, copy existing data to that, reformat the older hard drive and keep for further backups.
Kinda wished they had mentioned all that before I spent so much cash!
A little bit of reserarch and preparation before purchasing would not have gone amiss!

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