I have a lot of pictures saved on my pen drive and was working fine on my old computer, but now I have a new computer and when I put in my pen drive a message comes up that I need to format the drive but isn't that going to delete my pictures? Is there any other way to make this work?

when you put it in what does dmesg bring up?
and how do you use to access it?
also what distro you use might help

Cud u be more descriptive .. Which distrib u were using earlier and which u r using now ..

I hope u r mounting ur pen drive with mount .. I guess, GNU/Linux will take the device as sda0 ..

All I'm doing is plugging it into the usb port on the front of the tower and when I go to open the file, the message that pops up says The disk in drive L is not formatted..

Drive L?????
Ahm small question what OS are you using?

Windows XP

i believe you are in the wrong forum
this is a LINUX forum not a windows one

U r not at right place dear .. This place is for Linux . U better try some Windows Forum .. Still, I wud give it a try, as Linux philosophy is to FEEL FREE ..

Problem might come from File System .. May be something to do with NTFS and FAT 32 .. So check the File System for ur drive and the one you are using with your new OS .. Try to retrieve ur data on some machine with the same File System as ur Pen Drive.

Rest is all luck .. Better go to some Windows Forum ..

Good Luck from GNU/Linux ..

ayrus ...................................