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  • OP wants to back up his Blu-ray/4K collection to a HDD.
  • OP suspects that a very popular program that makes MKVs is actually a trojan horse that infects host computer's USB drives, which can later be used for anything else.
  • OP is considering purchasing a cheap, used laptop to run this program on and rip his collection, prior to transferring files to mass network storage.
  • How would OP ensure that the shady software doesn't infect his other computers/home network, in the case that this program infects the host's USB drives?

Or should one give up altogether in this instance and resort to something else?

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  • This is a bit of a contrived scenario that doesn't make sense. If you suspect the USB is infected, you just reformat the USB. If you are worried about BadUSB, then you simply use a USB that isn't vulnerable to that. But why would a MKV program infect USB? The far greater risk, and likelihood, is that the malicious program would embed malware into the files it creates. This is too much of a "strawman" or thought experiment with too many potential variables to answer on a Q&A site.
    – schroeder ♦
    Feb 16 at 9:27

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Windows has Windows Sandbox, which can quickly spin up a contained environment that you can install the software on and rip the discs.

This is pre-packaged as part of Windows 10 Professional, and can be installed on Windows 10 Home which I have successfully done.

Or look for a non-spyware open-sourced alternative.

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  • Or use a VM, or not save to USB at all, or ... there are far too many ways to address this scenario.
    – schroeder ♦
    Feb 16 at 9:32

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