Should I download my 4.3 software directly to the CEREC machine or to a portable thumb drive? I have heard this question a lot since Patterson announce that they are rolling out the 4.3 software over the next few months. If you have an internet connection to your CEREC machine, you can download it directly.  In my case, the internet connection is WIFI and incredibly slow! The download showed that it was going to take about 6 hours. I decided to download it to a large thumb drive that I had in my office using my land line and then I would just connect it to the machine. It was 32GB so I figured it would be no problem. Boy was I wrong! Turns out that most thumb drives can’t handle downloads larger than 4GB in size and the 4.3 download is just that. Even if you have a drive that is much larger than 4GB, you will likely get an error. You will need to reformat your thumb drive from a FAT32 file system to NTFS. Please don’t ask me what that means. I just know that the FAT32 format will not allow the download.  

Here is how you reformat your file.  

1. Plug thumb drive into your computer.  Click on my computer and find the USB disc under the computer.  You will right click on that USB disc and left click on format.  

2. Click on format and a new window will pop up.  Click the arrow on under the category of file system and change from fat32 to NTFS.  

3.  Click start.  When you do this, you will get a warning pop up. This will warn you that any data on your drive will be erased. Make sure that you take all files off that drive first or you will lose them. 

Give it a few minutes and the reformat of the drive will be complete. You will then be able to use your drive to accept the download from your desk top and then transfer this to your computer. I hope this helps.