I get most of my embroidery designs from emblibrary.com – and they give the option of downloading the unzipped files (that saves the step of unzipping the files). I have a number of flash drives that I use (they are inexpensive, and I would rather have smaller-capacity ones so I don’t have to go through as many files to find the one I want). I get my flash drives from OEMPCWorld–I bought a bunch of 256MB ones for $3.00 (free shipping):
http://www.oempcworld.com/OEMPCworld-com/Drive-Cap.html
To put your designs onto the flash drive: put the flash drive in a USB port on your computer; go to the designs (I have a special folder on the “C” drive for mine, with a shortcut on the desktop); highlight the design(s) you want; right-click and click “Copy”. In Windows Explorer, go to the location of the flash drive (under “Computer”, it will show your drives, so you will see where the flash drive is plugged in); right-click on the flash drive location and click “Paste”. That will put the design(s) on the flash drive, but still leave them on your computer for future use. Be sure you copy only the “jef” file (for Janome machines); if you have a PDF color sheet, it does not go onto the flash drive because the embroidery machine can’t read that format.
Plug the flash drive into your embroidery machine, and select the USB button–it will bring up the designs on the flash drive; select the design you want.
Embroidery Library has an outstanding tutorial on how to organize designs on your computer. I use that format because I like to be able to see what the design will look like. I use the categories that are used at that website, and have subfolders for individual designs. I print the color sheet when I get ready to embroider a design, and file it in a notebook. I make notations on it to reflect thread colors that I use, in case I want to repeat the design later.
Here’s the link to the tutorial:
http://www.emblibrary.com/EL/elproje...oductID=PR1735