I am still struggling to solve the problem with the malfunctioning USB 3 port on a desktop running Debian.
I would be very grateful if someone could please give useful answers to the following questions :-
(1) Can the desktop be safely rebooted, if needed, given the USB 3 problem?
(2) Can the USB 3 problem be fixed in some way or is the port now permanently unavailable?
(3) If the USB 3 port is unavailable, can the new portable hard drive be used to do a back-up of the system from the USB 2 port currently occupied by a card reader or is there any risk the card reader will be messed up again afterwards ?
(On a previous occasion, a portable hard drive was plugged into this USB 2 port in place of the card reader. The system issued a message indicating the port was busy. The card reader was plugged back into the USB 2 port and it was then found that a card inserted into the card reader could not be mounted).