#TechTipTuesday Dec. 15, 2020: CT Scanners

By Kaylee McCaffrey, Biomedical Engineering Solutions Sales Specialist

It’s #TechTipTuesday! Welcome to our weekly series where we ask members of the biomedical community about their tips and recommendations for maintaining medical equipment. This week we’re asking, “What tips do you have when it comes to CT systems?”

How to Properly Save a System State to USB on a GE LightSpeed Pro 16 CT Scanner

This week, we asked Shawn Kightlinger, a CT/MRI Support Specialist at Med Vest Technology, for his tips on saving a system state to a USB drive for the GE LightSpeed Pro 16 CT Scanner and later GE models. Read Shawn’s tip below:

When saving a system save state to a USB, sometimes the system will not save it properly. This failure to save or for the saved version to load can be caused by several reasons including that there is not enough storage, the USB is not blank, or the USB is improperly named.

When choosing a USB to save a system state, having a new and unused USB is best. However, if a new USB is not available, follow the steps below to ensure that the system state will save properly. While the save state file is actually less than 1 gigabyte, a 4 gigabyte or larger USB should be used. Some versions of software will save the system state but will not load it unless it is 4 gigabytes or larger.

Plug the USB into a laptop or computer (not the system console). Right click on the USB in the explorer window and go to Format. Make sure “FAT32” is selected and reformat the disk. This wipes all data off the USB.

Once reformatted, right click on the USB again and click Rename. Rename it to usbdisk (all lowercase). This should allow the USB to be used to save the system state. Some software requires that the USB is named this way while others do not. To ensure it will save, name it usbdisk and it should work.

Share Your Own Tips on LinkedIn!

Huge thanks to Shawn for giving us today’s tip on CT systems! Want to join the conversation and add your own tips? Be sure to follow me on LinkedIn and comment on today’s #TechTipTuesday post. See you next week!