Is it important to backup previous BIOS or other things before updating BIOS?

[JoshuaCaleb]

Hello, HP Support Assistant recommends updating my system BIOS. However, sometimes, I have read that previous BIOS should be backed up, or to be careful when updating that. There are different recommendations. I would like to find out what others recommend in regards to this.

[WAWood]

In my experience, it is absolutely CRITICAL to back up the existing BIOS before doing an update.  I have been doing this for many years on lots of different computers and more than once, have had a BIOS update trash my computer, with on the the BIOS backup there to restore it to working condition.

I don't do BIOS updates on HP computers anymore, so I don't know how to do the BIOS backups.

[JoshuaCaleb]

Hello, I would like to know if it is important to backup everything on my system besides the BIOS when updating the BIOS.

[WAWood]

Basically, any time you are doing an update that risks trashing the PC, and BIOS updates are included in this, the safest thing to do is do a Windows image backup to another drive, and make a rescue USB to boot from, so that you can restore the working system if something goes wrong. 

Problem with a BIOS update is that if it fails, you need a recovery BIOS USB stick and a way to boot into it, as a Windows backup is then useless because that does not back up the BIOS, nor does it give you a way to restore it.

My primary desktop is NOT an HP machine but one I built myself.  It has a retail motherboard that supports something called EZFlash -- by which you can save the current BIOS to a USB stick and then, if a BIOS update goes badly, you can press a special key and force the PC to boot from the BIOS USB stick and then restore the BIOS from that.

I don't do BIOS work on HP machines, so I don't know what utilities they have for BIOS saving or recovery.