I use dd, too. But I usually know what device corresponds to the USB drive. If my laptop only has one HDD/SSD, it's /dev/sda, so a USB drive will show up as /de

I use dd, too. But I usually know what device corresponds to the USB drive. If my laptop only has one HDD/SSD, it's /dev/sda, so a USB drive will show up as /dev/sdb. My desktop has two internal SSDs, sda and sdb, so the USB drive is going to be sdc.