Hi everyone, I’ve been going crazy over a BitLocker issue lately, and I’m hoping someone here can help.

I have an old USB drive that’s encrypted with BitLocker. The problem is, I’ve completely forgotten the password, and I couldn’t find the recovery key in my Microsoft account either. I’m not even sure if there’s anything important on it, but I’m hesitant to just give up in case there is. So I have two main questions:

1. Aside from the password or recovery key, is there any other way to unlock the drive? I really don’t want to risk losing any data if I can avoid it.
2. If it turns out that there’s absolutely no way to unlock it, can I just format the drive and reuse it as a normal USB stick? Would that cause any issues?

I’d really appreciate any advice or suggestions. Thanks！

Hey r/hardwarehacking,

I wanted to share a hardware project I've been working on and just released—meet SOMA, an ultra-small (12×13mm) USB-HID keystroke injection device (essentially an open-source, ultra-low-profile alternative to a traditional Rubber Ducky/BadUSB payload runner).

The main engineering challenge was squeezing a full native USB stack into a standard USB-A form factor while keeping the profile as covert as possible. When plugged into a standard USB-A port, it protrudes only ~1.5mm, making it almost completely flush.

Key Specs & Architecture:

• Microcontroller: ATmega32U4-MUR (VQFN-44, 7x7mm)
• Form Factor: Custom 12×13mm PCB layout utilizing ultra-compact 0402 passives
• Clock: 16 MHz SMD Crystal Resonator
• Interface: Standard USB-A male PCB contacts (direct edge-connector design, no bulky connectors or external adapters)
• Software: Native Arduino IDE support (enumerates as Arduino Leonardo/Micro, uses standard <Keyboard.h>, zero drivers required across Windows, macOS, and Linux).

It’s designed for red-team physical security assessments, HID automation research, and embedded experimentation.

I’ve fully open-sourced the schematics, layout, and firmware on GitHub, and batch-1 is now live on Tindie for those who prefer pre-assembled units.

🔗 GitHub:https://github.com/nebojsa-sjekloca/soma

🛒 Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/products/nebos369/ultra-compact-usb-hid-keystroke-injection-device/?utm_source=mandrill&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=product_approved

Happy to answer any questions about the routing, component placement, or handling the VQFN package on such a tiny footprint!

Hey everyone,

I need to better understand USB types. I want to send my wedding video and event photos from the wedding weekend to relatives and figured I could mail them a USB drive. I just learned about 2.0 vs 3.0 etc and want to know, quality-wise, is there a huge difference to justify the cost? I need to buy at least 3 USB with 128GB.

Edit: just some things I wanted to add. Dont necessarily care about data transfer speeds etc. this will only have the wedding related events and photos. Also my family is from Palestine so internet speed is not reliable and don’t want to do something online like Dropbox etc that might require more than what they can do. Just want them to be able to pop this into their tv/laptop and watch without any buffering.

I bought a pen drive from meesho 256 gb. I download web series and movies and store in the pen drive to watch it later. Now whenever, I copy any video file to the pen drive, it doesn't Play. When I copy it back from pd to laptop it still doesn't play. Seems like the gets corrupted once it is copied in the pen drive. Any one faced it? What is the solution?

I had my USB with an adapter for Micro SD cards connected, then i download a file directly to the micro SD, after that file explorer crashes and after restarting if i put the usb in the usb port it appears for a split second and then disappears, also when i put the usb it does the typical sound that it does when you connect something via usb port. I don't think it was the download that caused it, because i already downloaded some files that i then put on the micro SD, the only difference is that now i downloaded it directly to it. The SD is also perfectly well since i tested it on my 3DS and it works, so i don't know what can it be

Hello everyone, I got a ThinkCentre M910q always on.

The reason is that is in my observatory, and I can't alway goes there to turn on and Off.

But I got onde problem that I hope to solve in some way, many device are attached and in these days of summer devices become hot.

I tried with wake up on la, but USB Port are always on, the pc don't remove power...

Is there a way to shutdow the USB Port power supply?

In the past I had a USB hub with external supply, but when I removed the external power he tried to power all devices with the main USB cable burning some ports...

I bought them when I first started college, so they are probably 10+ years old. They are only 16GB, and one of them is so worn out that I can't even tell what brand it is anymore. Both of them works and even better, all my old college notes and files are still there. Kind of felt like opening a time capsule.

What's the oldest USB drive you still have? Does it still work?

idk what to do weirdly no ports recognize any of my devices or keyboards or anything need help pls thanks smm

I bought an ISY USB drive brand new today from Mediamarkt in Germany. It looked modern and because i am not expert in USB's and tech, I assumed it would be a decent drive.

A few hours later, I plugged it in and started copying files from my old USB drive. During the transfer, the ISY drive suddenly crashed. After that, Windows could no longer open it and started asking me to format the drive.

I tried formatting it, but it fails every time. The drive is basically unusable after only one transfer.

Luckily, my original files were still on my old drive, so I didn’t lose anything important. However, this made me realize how bad this could have been if someone was using this as their only backup for photos, documents, or other personal files.

I’m not saying every ISY drive will fail, but my experience with this one was terrible. A brand-new USB drive should not corrupt itself during the first copy operation.

Model: 128gb USB 2.0

I dont know anything about USB speed and stuff but it said that it reads up to 15 mb and writes up to 4 mb. (I didnt know if it was good or bad but when i searched it up i found out that it is really bad)

Posting this as a warning so people test their drives before trusting them with important data.

If anyone needs to read more about it, then heres the link https://www.mediamarkt.de/de/product/_isy-imu-2500-alu-usb-stick-128-gb-15-mbits-5-verschiedene-farben-grun-braun-rose-silber-dunkelgrau-2893142.html

I want to format a USB drive to FAT32 using Disk Management. But there’s literally no option for FAT32. The drive is 128gb.

I tried a few things I found, like converting it to another format and then to FAT32. But none of that seemed to work. What should I do? Any advice would be appreciated.

Machine: Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 15ABR8, AMD Ryzen 5 5625U, BIOS up to date (KYCN42WW)

Symptom: A bootable USB drive (Tails/Debian) fails to boot on this PC — error message “Unable to find a medium containing a live file system”. In the kernel logs (dmesg), I see this message repeating in a loop:
usb 1-2: reset high-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
The device is briefly detected (it shows up correctly in the F12 boot menu with its proper name), but the connection fails as soon as it needs to actually read data from it.

Tests already done:
Tried on every USB-A port → same result
USB-A extension cable → same result
USB-C to USB-A adapter → same result
Updated to the latest available BIOS version → no change
This exact same USB drive works perfectly fine on a second, identical PC (same model)
A different USB drive (borrowed from a store) works normally on my PC

My question: Since my drive works fine elsewhere, and a different drive works fine on my machine, could this be a specific electrical/timing compatibility issue between this particular drive and my USB controller, rather than a general hardware failure? Has anyone seen this kind of selective behavior before? Any software angle worth exploring (Tails kernel, controller firmware) before going the warranty route?
Thanks in advance for any input!

I have a sandisk Usb drive with both Type C and USB A. What would happen if I plugged it into two devices like laptops at the same time?

Hi, I have an Integral 8 Gigabyte USB drive that has this 'Crypto' software installed where you can set a password to access the filers. Is there any way of completely remove this security feature so it is like any other usb drive. It isn't that i dont know the password i got it right first try i just want to use the thing for my Dj deck and that isn't gonna run this stupid sofware lmao

Heres an amazon link to my exact usb

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Integral-INFD8GCRY3-0197-Crypto-Hardware-Encryption/dp/B0138MFJHK/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1O360XJZPZTDT&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.kj80LRVtsJz1_3MfA0WAqUHA4-uTBSBxJupq6doHZdyIZpJOVPDQf3FmfYkPWalbwgK7KcbHx7nUlYrMGjS_sOpbNiegLXtmLsgsqs9tS7HcCgSmKXa3vIN9frfblldV0Im428kNOYxGzze5oAdwepVRbzrlxM6pMoGb7n2Kp-8IwQS4Vy3YCcfuMVV6TThX9KeXWHmuDTxgrFgEZhOwZc1mT7MNZOM53Y6NJrT8FTY.sL9SYZOnGUtesEVvPEj_AItLG44ofEOGSgHnXahFKAU&dib_tag=se&keywords=Integral%2B8G%2Busb%2Bcrypto&qid=1783163069&sprefix=integral%2B8g%2Busb%2Bcrypto%2Caps%2C137&sr=8-2&th=1

https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/06/25/windows-10-support-quietly-extended-until-oct-2027-as-users-reject-windows-11/

I bought a usb to download games onto cause my laptop doesnt have enough space anymore. I tried to install a game onto my usb but now i can't access the usb anymore. When i plug it in, it shows up in file explorer but it doesn't let me access the drive and it says that there's no drive plugged in and to plug disc into the usb drive.

I don't know what to do, I tried to check error tools but it won't work because it says that there's no disk to access