Transfer files from mac to pc

I've put my mac files on an external hard drive to transfer but this doesn't show up on PC. The same with a USB stick. Why is this?

If you are on Tiger or Leopard use the export feature for your files, then you have choice of Word Excel pdf rtf formats which should be able to be read by PCs

Probably because of how your devices are formatted. PC don't read Mac Journaled. Need to format your devices as FAT32 however that kind of limits you to files that are smaller than 4GB.

I'm trying to transfer music files. What is FAT32? cheers

When you format any drive, usb stick or hard drive you can format it in several formats, here are the basic ones.

Mac OS Extended - the default for macs - cannot be read on windows PCs without installing additional software

FAT32 - Called MS DOS (FAT) in Apple's disk utility. Can be used by both Mac and Windows computers. There is a file limit of 4 gig - so not suitable for large movie files

NTFS (Windows NT File System) - The default drive format for windows. Macs ran read NTFS but not write to NTFS without additional software like Google's MacFuse macfuse - Google Code
You will have to format a drive on a PC to get NTFS