24-hour BIOS update? User's attempt to flash motherboard becomes a marathon
You gotta have some patience for this install.

Redditor u/GoatWithAGun updated the BIOS of an old PC packing a BioStar A320MH motherboard, and 24 hours later, the update process is only about 66% done. The Reddit user is updating the subreddit r/pcmasterrace on the process, and a lot of users are now following the progress through multiple posts.
According to u/GoatWithAGun, the computer in question is used as a backup device and is often just used by their roommates for printing. Nevertheless, they still updated the motherboard because it offered stability fixes.
Hour 4 of my BIOS update… Not cool BioStar… from r/pcmasterrace
The computer in question is a machine with parts from around 2018. Aside from the BioStar A320MH rev 6.0 motherboard, the redditor told Tom's Hardware that the PC also has an AMD Ryzen 3 1200 CPU, 4GB of DDR4-2400 Kingston HyperX memory, an Asus GTX 1660 GPU, a 128GB Transcend SATA SSD, and a 480GB Crucial SATA SSD. Despite being seven years old, it’s still quite usable, especially if you’re not using it for AAA gaming.
This isn’t the first time that u/GoatWithAGun installed a BIOS update, so the more than 24-hour process was a shock to them. At the time of writing, they left the PC updating its BIOS in their dorm — if it’s still installing by the time they get back tomorrow, they plan to set up a live stream so that other Redditors can join them in their pain.
From 4 hours to 16 hours… from r/pcmasterrace
We do not know the reason why the BIOS update is taking so long, as the process usually takes a few minutes at most. The Redditor suspects that this happened because they installed the update directly from their SSD, but we cannot say that for sure.
Unfortunately, you cannot cancel this update as interrupting it will only brick the system. As the BioStar A320MH is a pretty basic model, it doesn’t have dual BIOS or BIOS flashback, so u/GoatWithAGun does not have any other option except to let it finish. Furthermore, they also confirmed that the PC is not equipped with a UPS, so any kind of power interruption would mean that it is toast.
past the 24-hour mark now… from r/pcmasterrace
Hopefully, we will see a post soon showing a successful BIOS update. But should it fail, u/GoatWithAGun could just hop on the used market and find a replacement as all their other components still work well. Nevertheless, we're cheering them and their motherboard on.
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Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.


















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artk2219 Could also be a wonky bios chip, but so long as it finishes and works afterwards, it should be fine.Reply -
Notton Do SATA SSDs fall back into a slower read, like ATA-33, when the drive has read errors?Reply
Alternatively, watch it turn out this was a BIOS bug and Biostar patches it in a few months. -
DS426
I wondered if it was something like that as well, but using your specific example, even ATA-33 at just under 33 MB/sec, it would be able to write the entire BIOS bin file in about a second, which obviously wouldn't happen that fast as these EEPROM chips can't write nearly that quickly.Notton said:Do SATA SSDs fall back into a slower read, like ATA-33, when the drive has read errors?
Alternatively, watch it turn out this was a BIOS bug and Biostar patches it in a few months.
That said, it does seem like there's a bug that's causing data to bus from the SSD to the EEPROM at practically bits per second, but I'd love to here my hypotheses on this.
Either way, wild!! Floppy flashing wasn't nearly that slow either, in case anyone was wondering that has never experienced such. -
Kn1ght0fN1
That was my first thought - I've been building computers since even before Computer Shopper was an inch-thick Bible we got at the newsstand... Updating BIOS from a 5.25 floppy never took more than a few minutes.DS426 said:That said, it does seem like there's a bug that's causing data to bus from the SSD to the EEPROM at practically bits per second, but I'd love to here my hypotheses on this.
Either way, wild!! Floppy flashing wasn't nearly that slow either, in case anyone was wondering that has never experienced such.
Something's gone really wonky with this update, I will be really surprised if it's functional after. He might have to go with the way we updated BIOS before the floppy days - replacing the chip! (or flashing it in place, if possible) -
hwertz Geez that'd be nerve wracking. BIOS updates always make me a bit nervous but usually only for 5 minutes. I'm with those who think it may be reading the SSD at some insanely low speed. Best of luck to them!Reply -
great Unknown
Computer Shopper! Thanks for the memory.Kn1ght0fN1 said:That was my first thought - I've been building computers since even before Computer Shopper was an inch-thick Bible we got at the newsstand... Updating BIOS from a 5.25 floppy never took more than a few minutes.
Something's gone really wonky with this update, I will be really surprised if it's functional after. He might have to go with the way we updated BIOS before the floppy days - replacing the chip! (or flashing it in place, if possible) -
Alvar "Miles" Udell Reason number upteen that USB BIOS Flashback needs to be a standard, required feature on all motherboards.Reply -
Dntknwitall Watch it finish and it still has the old bios on and didn't even flash. That would be the time it goes up for sale on marketplace. Someone else can deal with the cursed machine.Reply