r/BadUSB

Hi everyone, I have a Samsung 1TB external SSD containing some extremely valuable photos. I regularly access these photos from my computer for editing, and this is both part of my work and one of my hobbies. Because of that, I often leave the external SSD connected to my Windows PC for long periods of time, sometimes for days or longer.

My questions are:

1. Is it generally safe to leave an external SSD connected to a computer continuously?
2. How often, if ever, should I safely eject it?
3. Can keeping it connected all the time significantly shorten its lifespan or increase the risk of data corruption? Would it be better to disconnect it whenever I am not actively using it?

I have additional copies of the photos, but still wanna some practical advice about how to manage external SSDs that are used frequently.

i don’t understand why when I put my new usb in my pc I hear the noise that it connects but I don’t see it in file explorer pls help me

I bought a new SanDisk 64gb usb yesterday. When I tried to flash an img on it gnome-disk said it was read only so I opened it with a file explorer*.* Its name was tails and it already had folders like EFI and sysLinux, which was very suspicious so I unmounted it. After that it did not work on any port on any device, failing to connect entirely and i returned it to the store as a defective product.

Do I have to worry about viruses?

I need to move a few hundred GB of videos and other large files to free up space on another PC. I have several USB flash drives, including several with large capacities. But the transfer took much longer than I expected.

Is a portable SSD better for this kind of work? I’ve read that SSDs are way faster and more reliable for big file transfers, but I’m not sure if the difference is that noticeable in real life.

If you’ve used both, which one do you prefer?

My USB flash drive was working fine right before this: I tried to format it with Rufus to create a bootable Win 11 but it failed and since then, I cannot format it anymore and the disk management shows it as RAW.

Everytime I try to format it, it disappears from My Computer so of course, it fails as the disk isn't connected anymore.

Is it dead?

I have a sit en exam on my university’s computers. They are windows desktops. We are allowed to bring USB sticks for notes, but we must put them away 15 min before the exam starts. Hypothetically, if I were to plug a sleek usb into the pc halfways through the exam, pull a file out, and quickly hide the usb would it be noticed? There’s no camera on the screens, but I am nervous that they could track the USB insertion log, and see that I inserted something when I shouldn’t have

Guys, is a USB flash drive really bad for saving data? I've been using USB flash drives to keep my old photos, videos, and personal data for a couple of years, and so far, nothing has happened. Recently, I noticed someone's taking up this idea that "USB flash drives are not really good for long-term storage". Is it true that USB is really bad and unreliable?

I used USBs to keep all my files safely. I wonder how you guys are saving files or what storage method you are using?

Hi, I'm copying a long video to a USB flash drive. There is over 200GB free space but when I do this, it says the file is too large. Any way to fix this?

Windows 11

Sandisk USB flash drive (213GB free space)

The video is not corrupted or damaged and can be played on my laptop. (Around 7GB）

I have a set of flash drives which I load up with video content to watch on my Samsung S90D 2024 4K TV.
One of the drives I last used on Saturday night is no longer recognized by my TV.

However, I can read and write to the drive via my PC.

What's up?

The drive in question is: SANDISK 256GB Ultra Luxe USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drive - SDCZ74-256G-G46

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Hey guys, hoping someone here can possibly help me before I go to a shop and get my hardware looked at. I have an older gaming laptop, it’s an ASUS TUF505D. I took my laptop with me to work two days ago, all my peripherals worked fine, packed it up, brought it home with me and when I plugged it all back up in my office, nothing works.

I checked my mouse and external keyboard against the wife’s laptop, it works. Worked through the basic troubleshooting. Uninstalled all USB drives and restarted the computer, nothing. Updated drivers entirely for the whole system just to make sure it wasn’t a complication elsewhere. Opened up the back and just looked to see if there was anything visual I could see, a burn or something on the board.

I am on a hell of a budget right now so I’m trying to see if I can solve this with your help. I can’t afford an IT shop atm.

If anyone has any suggestions or needs more information please let me know, thanks in advance!

https://preview.redd.it/s1zhnx2iwwhh1.png?width=535&format=png&auto=webp&s=39114e0839a40c91eb9f02017840568e45c35688

I lost bitlocker recovery key so I planned to format it to reuse. My car gets a USB port that can only read FAT32. But there is no FAT32 when I format it in File Explorer since it's 128GB. External USB drives and flash drives are getting bigger, yet some devices can only read FAT32. Why hasn’t Microsoft lifted this restriction yet? I’ve seen reports many times saying they’re going to remove this restriction, but there’s still no sign of any action.

I hope this is the right sub for this. I have a TV which has 3 HDMI inputs and 2 have failed. The TV also has 3 USB A inputs. I wanted to know if it is possible to pass a Firestick through a HDMI to USB A converter and use it that way? And if anyone has done this which converter you would recommend.

Grateful for any help, even if it is to say it is a non runner.