External hard drive won't open jpeg files. I've had the same problem off and on and it seems it's

Question

I've had the same problem off and on and it seems it's related to the amount of space I have on my C: drive. My external hard drive won't open my picture files (most all jpegs) but it will open other files easily. It won't even open the folders they're in. I only have 11 GB of space on my hard drive (hence the reason I bought this) and when I was down to like 240 MB it wouldn't let me do anything PERIOD because of low disk space. Anyway, I moved pictures to the external drive (25 GB worth apparently) and then it opened just fine. I added Microsoft Publisher to my computer and now the folders or files won't open again. Is the external drive dependent on a certain amount of disk space for it to be able to open certain large files/folders? How do I fix this because I can no longer access my pictures no matter what I do--tried dragging to desk top, still won't open. I'm on the phone with tech support but it's taking forever and I don't think I'll have time to wait for them today. Thanks so much!