So this is like my 5th time trying to fix this. I used to have a garbage laptop and ran my games off of an external hardrive. I just checked, and all my saves are still there, but when I try to load the game nothing happens. I tried uploading it to GOG from the external hardrive (don't know how that went since it's saying now that the game wasn't installed when it definitely was last time I checked). Now it's saying I have cloud saves but the last time I tried to download them there was an ERROR message. I tried launching it from the hardrive but my saves still weren't there. I'm just really angry and frustrated and I just want to play my damn game without starting over. Can someone please give me very specific step by step instructions without a lot of technical terms on how to fix this? Thanks.

This is the general forum, not game specific forum.
It would help to know wich game you refer to?

If it's possible, try copy-pasting (not cut-paste) a save from the external drive into the saves folder for whichever game you're having the issue with. That should fix it and, hopefully, that'll fix the cloud save issue too but don't quote me on that.

As always, I recommend not using an external drive for installed things (apart from portable apps).

Install a fresh copy of the game to your main drive, into something like c:/mygames
Run the game and ensure it works and create a save.
Using pcgamingwiki if necessary, locate your saves folder.
From your external drive copy and paste your saves over what is in that folder, ensuring you keep the naming.

Now that is the general process. You have not told us what game, where you got it from. If the old version of the game does not match then it may not work. If you had mods, it may not work. If you have cloud saves/galaxy that could be a source of issues. Need more information.

"used to have", as in you are now trying to launch those games from another computer? In which case I have strong suspicion that your savegames were left under your account folder in the old laptop and the external drive only contains the installation directories which would also explain why you can't even start those games as you may need to also import some registry keys from the old laptop because for no real good reason modern games are often made to look for their paths from the registry...

I have never owned an external HDD that was free of doing dodgy things, corrupting files, making clicking sounds and a million other things - then as soon as i transfer the external drive to an internal drive, its like miracle grow to the performance of the drive! I have even had external drives in total failure suddenly work perfectly when transferred to internal.

But nowadays the newer external drives have been changed so you can never transfer them to internal - perhaps it has something to do with the reliability since the two that i own of this style have so far given me no trouble??

I am sorry, trying to decipher your post here. In terms of external hdds failing (I assume you mean) it can be any number of issues, I have about 10-15 all been working for years, but I do not use them for regular day to day only as backup or transfer medium. If an external drive fails and removing the hdd and connecting it directly via sata to the main board works, then the drive controller or usb controller failed, that’s not the hdd.
I do not understand your last paragraph though. I have yet to see an external drive which you can’t remove the case and find a normal hdd inside. Perhaps if you buy cheap ones they might be glued or something, or maybe you mean ssd chip varieties? An example may help.

I do however agree, wouldnt use external drives for day to day working unless you really had no choice.

I can't help but think back in 1996? When i had a Iomega Zip drive, and a 100Mb floppy. Put DOOM on it... it was so slow to load and play i just copied the game onto the drive of the computer (which wasn't suppose to have the game on it)...

Anyways, files may ba partially courrupted and error correction may fix it during copying. So copying it may be best.

Also when you get copies (that work) i suggest burning a backup of anything you can't just install.