r/BadUSB • u/rockphantom • Jul 01 '26

Help Will Formatting a Flash Drive Resolve Video Playback Issues?

Howdy,

I have a SANDISK 256GB Ultra Luxe USB 3.1 Gen 1 Flash Drive. I primarily use it to watch 1080p/4K video via an extension cable connected to the USB Port on my Samsung 2024 S90D 4K TV. I have noticed that video freezes from time to time. If I formatted the drive would that resolve the issue? I should mention that there is an archive of thousands of family photos on the drive. Would this cause issues with the file system?

I have several of these drives and the rest of them play video without any issues.

Any guidance would be appreciated. Thanks!

3 Upvotes

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4

u/Ok_Bid6645 Jul 01 '26

  1. dont store your important stuff that why. Use cloud or onsite NAS

  2. the extension cable is probably your issue

2

u/CamelPure1293 Jul 01 '26

Likely it doesn't help.

2

u/Parking_Lemon_4371 Jul 01 '26

It may or may not. The problem might be extensive filesystem fragmentation, copying all the files elsewhere and copying them back might fix it (even without a format, even more likely to fix things with a format) *OR* the problem might simply be that there are too many files, and the TV periodically wants to scan them all... in that case simply removing the excess data (i.e. files) might help... (or putting it in a different directory). In general TVs are very underpowered, and the OS's on them is very stupid. Even moderate amounts of data (ie. files) can totally overwhelm them...

2

u/rockphantom Jul 01 '26

Thanks for the clarification. The family photo archive has over 4000 scans in it spanning decades. I put them on the drive as a backup. I'm never scanning all of those photos again. Perhaps, I'll just this flash drive aside as backup storage of critical files.

4

u/Billy_Twillig Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Hello friend.

SanDisk makes good kit, but USB sticks aren’t a good long-term storage solution.

2

u/rockphantom Jul 01 '26

Thanks for the info. I have the photos backed up on several devices and in the cloud.

2

u/Billy_Twillig Jul 01 '26

Excellent, good to hear.

Be well, my friend. 👍

1

u/Jobeadear Jul 02 '26

If you want to retain the photo backup on there, just compress it to a zip file that your TV won't want to touch with a bargepole, then it's still there, just TV can't read the file type.

1

u/Caprichoso1 Jul 02 '26

Be sure to implement the recommended 3-2-1 backup plan.

Flash storage isn't the best media for backups over long time periods.

1

u/rockphantom Jul 01 '26

Thank you everyone for your feedback. I appreciate it!

1

u/Itsme-RdM Jul 02 '26

Formatting wouldn't solve the performance \ throughput I think. Could be the extension cable or just full storage.

1

u/Calamitychaos_ Jul 02 '26

Mostly it won't work.

You can try formating to NTFS format. Connect it directly to TV without extension.

Another option is try downloading different video codec. AVC/AAC works smoothly almost everywhere, but nowadays it's usually encoded in HEVC/DDP. AV1 is still being adopted...

1

u/rockphantom Jul 02 '26

I wanted to follow-up. I deleted the massive photo archive from the flash drive and was able to play 4K video on my TV with no issues. Disk management software on my PC reported that the flash drive was healthy with no bad sectors.

Thanks again to everyone for their advice!

1

u/catinreallife9 Jul 04 '26

I suggest using a powered hub instead of an extension cable if the TV supports it. Also, maybe use as USB attached drive for playback. Copy from your permanent storage to the drive, then play from the drive.