Aspire 5560 with Win 10. Safe to do bios/firmware updates?

I upgraded my Aspire 5560 notebook from Windows 7 to Win 10, So far, everything is running smoothly, except for 100% disk usage right after start-up. It lasts about 10 minutes, then stops. I have done some tweaks and a lot of research and that problem I can now live with. My dilema is this:

Acer has a bios update for my notebook, and a firmware update which is supposed to improve hard disk efficiency. Since I have upgraded the operating system to Win 10, I am a little afraid to apply either of these updates, especially since my system is pretty stable. Obviously with such a legacy notebook, Acer does not support Win 10 on a 5560. If something goes wrong with the above updates, I am totally on my own. Anyone think it is worth the risk of installing them? Thanks for your input, I really appreciate it!

Accepted answers

IronFly

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/3818?b=1

If your model is the one of the above link, updating BIOS is not so mandatory since the changelog is related to AMD graphic card support.

About the update for the HDD, is for the WD (western digital) model, it's a firmware update nothing related to BIOS; if your HDD is the original WD, you can check the firmware version of your HDD first (i suppose the firmware updater will give you this information); keep in mind that an HDD firmware update sometimes will reset the HDD as it was new, so there's a possibility that you lost your data.

so, do a full backup prior to update the HDD firmware.

All comments

IronFly

https://www.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/support-product/3818?b=1

If your model is the one of the above link, updating BIOS is not so mandatory since the changelog is related to AMD graphic card support.

About the update for the HDD, is for the WD (western digital) model, it's a firmware update nothing related to BIOS; if your HDD is the original WD, you can check the firmware version of your HDD first (i suppose the firmware updater will give you this information); keep in mind that an HDD firmware update sometimes will reset the HDD as it was new, so there's a possibility that you lost your data.

so, do a full backup prior to update the HDD firmware.

amerimama

Thanks so much, IronFly. Yes, the link you provided was for my notebook. After reading your reply, I realized the bios "update" I was looking to apply was not an update at all (based on the creation date), just a download of the original bios that came with the notebook. (I have a different model AMD graphics card, not a Radeon 7670M.)

Also, I didn't even notice that the firmware update was just for WD/Western Digital hard drives. I just checked mine and it is a Seagate. Thanks so much for your answers. Saved me a ton of work and a lot of worrying.

I'm feeling a little stupid not to have noticed some of those things earlier, but, I figure, I was at least smart enough to ask the question here before doing any updates. Thanks for your help! It is greatly appreciated. And, happy Friday the 13th, too!