To preserve the life of a USB port, is it a good idea to leave a memory stick in place when it's not necessary for it to be removed from the port? How many connections/disconnections will a USB port tolerate?
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>> How many connections/disconnections will a USB port tolerate?
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No idea. I've been using the same full tower case (which has additional USB ports to connect to the Motherboard headers) for nearly a decade now.
They all still work perfectly, despite things being repeatedly plugged/unplugged into them. They get more use than the motherboard ones as they're more accessible.
Given my upgrade cycles, those ports have in effect outlasted four machines and are about to continue duty on a fifth.
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...while on the other hand I have a tower which is admittedly over 6 years old but one of the front USBs has somehow detached itself inside, so it's loose and you can;t plug anything into it. Might be an easy fix if I needed it, but there are also other front ports and three or four at the back - and five on my USB hub - how many USB ports can a man need?
But to answer the question, I'd not think twice about removing stuff when not is use, the ports are usually very durable. Sometimes stuff which is plugged in will cause slow or failed start ups. And consumes a teensy bit of power too, which must affect the lifetime of that device.
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Normally 1,024,183 but can vary.
;-)
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USB ports are pretty hardy.
My work laptop has had a keyboard and mouse plugged into the same two ports, and unplugged again, anything up to several times a day, 5 days a week for almost 2 years, and it's still fine.
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Its advisable to remove the USB stick, it can increase PC boot up time if its in situ.
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Depends on the BIOS used. Some painfully and slowly enumerate all the available USB storage devices at boot, some don't.
Mine does and I used to have a multiformat card reader thingy that presented each possible card type as an individual device. That was a right pain.
I ditched it when I got the multifunction printer, which has a card reader built in. Rather handily that presents as one drive, despite accepting all the formats.
Many BIOS's allow you to turn off "legacy USB support" and if you don't need USB boot on, this often stops them bothering to enumerate storage devices.
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On my desktop ihave a USB extension lead plugged in permanently, got it from the pound shop, in the unlikely event of all 4 ways wearing out it's cheap enough to replace.
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