I spent a fair amount of time this morning researching and then very nearly replaced my microSD card with a USB drive. By all accounts, the speed is better, the reliability seems to be better than those microSDs and certainly, it would make it much easier on my printer since it's within reach from the front of the printer. No longer would I have to go inside and try to extract that for the replacement.
I'm glad I put the research into this. Toward the end, I read this from the Raspberry Pi official documentation which indicates:
It is important to remember that, once set, OTP bits can never be unset, so think carefully before enabling this facility because it effectively makes 5 GPIOs unusable for other purposes. Also note that the bit assignments make it possible to switch from the low bank (22-26) to the high bank (39-43), but not back again, and that selecting the high bank is likely to produce a non-bootable Pi, unless you're using a Compute Module (any version).
The tutorial I was reading before didn't mention this at all.
Why on Earth would the Raspberry Pi have a feature that can't be reversed, once set?
Short version: be wary of trying to replace your microSD with a USB drive.
