"Data has become so huge it's now impractical to back everything up."
 
Nope don't think so sorry. You can buy 4tb hard drive and a copy of acronis for under 200 pounds(340 dollars). Backing up has never been so quick and cheap, and you should be partitioning your data away from the OS.

I've never had an issue updating. Of course, I do make restore points religiously.
But I'm an IT guy and like the danger :P
 
p.s. Storage is cheap. Get a NAS and make incremental backups of your drives. DONE!
 

+1 for NAS. I love my Synology box.

CakeAlexS
> If it aint broke don't fix it.  When it comes to a BIOS even the manufacturers recommend not updating unless it's totally necessary. 
 
Really? Please supply me the link to the manufacturer who recomends not doing BIOS updates? BIOSs nowadays are easy and pretty safe to update and rollback. If you've ever done server support for instance you will probably be doing regular BIOS updates and pushing out firmware like windows update. Even my TV and router has firmware updates pushed out from the manufacturer (automated). I generally wait an extra month though before I do it in case of any issues. In the future (maybe years away) I expect firmware and BIOS updates to be rolled out automatically like any software update), BIOS updates are no big deal any more. There you go.

Hi, CakeAlexS,
 
from the Intel site:

• Update the BIOS on your computer only if the newer BIOS version specifically solves a problem you have. We do not recommend BIOS updates for computers that do not need it. You can view all new BIOS fixes in the release notes.

https://downloadcenter.in...&DownloadType=BIOS

Atsuko
from the Intel site:

• Update the BIOS on your computer only if the newer BIOS version specifically solves a problem you have. We do not recommend BIOS updates for computers that do not need it. You can view all new BIOS fixes in the release notes.

https://downloadcenter.in...&DownloadType=BIOS

I was once told the same thing by an old IT guy. He made a very convincing argument, too. I've destroyed computers doing BIOS updates (which is why he told me this) and even though they're 'safe' to do these days, I concur 100% (and I'm pretty sure if Ken is still around, he'd still say the same thing). Not broke? Not fixing it; not me. Nope.
 
Some things just aren't our business.

Finally somebody backs up with facts. Well done checkmate. Still they don't understand the Chinese changelogs I bet.
PS Umm destroying machines with BIOS updates. Nope. You generally have to play hunt the jumper if things really go wrong.

CakeAlexS
Finally somebody backs up with facts. Well done checkmate. Still they don't understand the Chinese changelogs I bet.
PS Umm destroying machines with BIOS updates. Nope. You generally have to play hunt the jumper if things really go wrong.

I like to have everything up to date in my computer but when it comes to bios update, nope, I believe in what the manufacturer states.
Sorry, I don't get what you mean with the chinese changelogs...
 

I saw this in the thread earlier and want to re-iterate it. I think the majority of users fall into the "want to make music" crowd, and are not necessarily (if at all) computer savvy. Some will come in, ask a question and blindly take advice of people giving it, so please be aware of this. Because of this I refrain from recommending registry edits or BIOS updates (or even changes to BIOS). Recommending these to someone totally unfamiliar with it will look at "post count," be persuaded by that, and then potentially burn themselves unnecessarily.
 
For the record, I have changed BIOS is this machine only once (going on 3 years old now), and it was not required. In fact, the BIOS in this system (initially) was a custom build that cannot be found again... so if I had not saved the default BIOS first and that update failed, I could have easily had more issues. BIOS is one of those things that if it doesn't have a certain level of maturity, products will not ship... manufacturers cannot rely on any end-user to manually update BIOS like a software update.
 
Again, please be aware of this...

@atsuko As stated earlier motherboard manufacturers are terrible at updating change logs, often this is due to translation failures or just general bad documentation. This leads to bad readme files.
 
Anybody who has managed Dell servers for instance will know (or should know) about the BIOS update schedule. Mature BIOS at  the beginning? Naa. Often its cart before horse when it comes to firmware.
 
I'm not recommending registry hacking BTW for standard users, nor am I recommending people updating BIOS's should they feel uncomfortable. However I don't think BIOS updates are just for the realm of the IT nerd., ability to read helps, even of reading threads carefully without passing judgement (a rare skill nowadays I notice, often just the last few posts are read). Anyway I've already said all this. I appreciate 'users with high post count' is me let's not beat around the bush.
 
Cheers.