USB Jump Drive Question for Techy Mamas

hit no, then open (im assuming your using a pc, macs don't do that...) my computer, and find your E drive, i think, it should have the name of the brand your usb is, unless you renamed it (then look for the name you gave it) and then it should open. otherwise search the name of your documents/pictures/whatever in my documents.
that should work.

and yes you can transfer from pc to mac, mac to pc isn't as easy, but usb's do work, just have to export file to a format recognized on the other computer, (Mac- say you used pages, export, select word document, and it saves it as a word document. otherwise macs can open almost anything

I believe so, yes. Try just not formatting it. However, if you're trying to go between a PC and a Mac, you're not going to be able to with a thumb drive. In that situation, you're better off burning the data to a cd and transferring them that way.

Just click no and then access the storage through "my computer".

Did something happen to your old computer that you can't connect both to your network then pull the files from your old computer to your new one that way?

Odd... kind of takes the Universal out of USB if it doesn't work in all computers. Reformatting will delete everything (although recoverable so long as you have not saved anything new to it). When you plug the USB in it should load drivers and then open up a window asking you what you want to do, you can select View in Explorer (folders).

If that doesn't happen then you can try to go to Start>Computer>select your drive (should be anything but Local Disk:C:)

If it still prompts you to reformat, it means you did not format your USB in a way your computer can read it. It may be FAT32 which is limited on which Window operating system you can use to open it. You may need to just reformat it again (pick NTFS if you can, otherwise FAT). Then you'll have to transfer those files over again. Ofcourse if you can't get those files again you can recover files after the reformat. That requires software but it's not really hard to do. I'll leave that for another post if you find you need to recover data. =)

This is a long shot but there is a possibility that your USB drive was never formatted even though it appeared to be able to transfer files over. In that case, you never got the files at all and the drive needs to be formatted for the first time.

Yes you are correct. Did you save any of the data anywhere else? It is always a good idea to have a backup of what you saved on a portable USB drive to something else like a hard drive or a CD or DVD that has already been formatted. Formatting is important to do before you save anything on a USB, CD or DVD. It protects your computer from picking up viruses and it also lets the computer scan it for viruses, and makes sure that it is compatible with your system. Portable drives have software of their own from the manufacturer, and some computers just have to do a check.

If you have any virus in your usb drive then your anti virus program will not allow you to open your drive.

You can try this:
right click on the start menu and click on windows explorer. 
You'll get a list of all of your driver including your usb drive on the left hand side. 
Click now on your usb drive. You'll see the contents of your usb drive. 

I hope this helps...if not, and if you have the data saved somewherr else, then at least you have a backup.
Now copy your data to your hard disc. 
Now open my computer and format your usb. Your usb is ready to work!