How to upgrade the Minisforum MS-01 BIOS

If you are running the Minisforum MS-01 in your home lab as a home server, if you are like me, you may have bought one of the first ones that came out right around the first of this year in 2024. If so, you may have an older BIOS from mid-December, like was on my original MS-01. There was BIOS released in March 2024 for the MS-01 which is the current latest version at v1.22. In case you want to know how to upgrade the BIOS, I am going to walk you through those simple steps for the Minisforum MS-01 BIOS upgrade.

Minisforum v1.22 BIOS version release notes

In case you want to know what is included in the v1.22 version of the MS-01 release notes, you can take a look at that below:

*****************************************
*          BIOS Release Notice          *    
*****************************************
Release Date:
    2024/03/12

BIOS Version:
    1.22

BIOS Checksum:
    DADF

BIOS Description:
    1.Set 55w as pl1 default value
    2.lastest batch factory BIOS
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Release Date:
    2024/03/06

BIOS Version:
    1.21

BIOS Checksum:
    47D7

BIOS Description:
    1.add pl1/pl2 for 12600H
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Release Date:
    2024/02/23

BIOS Version:
    1.20

BIOS Checksum:
    E909

BIOS Description:
    1.modify logo&dmi for factory BIOS
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Overview of the steps to update your Minisforum MS-01 BIOS

Let’s consider an overview of the steps to update your Minisforum MS-01 BIOS. Keep in mind that updating the BIOS is something you want to give attention to detail. Above all, don’t turn off the power when flashing or make sure the power doesn’t get turned off for some reason as this may “brick” your MS-01.

First of all, download the package that is found here: Minisforum.

Prepare your USB disk drive

If you have a USB “thumb” drive, you can easily prepare it for the files by using diskpart. Note, you will erase everything on the USB disk with the steps below which will prepare the USB disk with the needed FAT32 partition.

diskpart
list disk
select disk X  # Replace X with the number of the disk you want to format
clean
create partition primary
format fs=fat32 quick

If you are running the BIOS upgrade in Windows

• Disable “secure boot” in BIOS
• Run as administrator run “AfuWinFlash.bat“

Upgrade the BIOS in UEFI Shell

First of all, you will need to prepare a USB drive with a FAT32 formatted partition as shown in the above section. Then follow these steps:

1. Unzip file to root of FAT32 format disk.
2. Disable “secure boot” in BIOS
3. Boot into U disk, with uefi shell (F7 to choose boot disk)
4. Use “FS0:” “FS1:” “FS2:” to find your BIOS udisk (mine below was FS0 as you can see)
   • Use the command “ls” to check the files contained as you change to each one until you find your USB disk
5. Run AfuEfiFlash.nsh

Below is a pic I snapped after entering the AfuEfiFlash.nsh command. You can see where I entered the command and it will automatically start running through the update steps. At this point, it is fully automated.

After the script progresses, you will see it get past erasing the old BIOS and copying the new. It will go through the process to verify everything and then it will automatically reboot your Minisforum MS-01. Also, don’t worry if it takes a couple of minutes to get video signal back on your MS-01 as this was the behavior that I saw during the upgrade process.

Wrapping up

The MS-01 is a great home lab machine that I am using full on as the core of my home lab now, replacing aged Supermicro Xeon-D servers. So far I haven’t seen any stability issues or problems to note. Everything has been working as expected. Part of keeping things stable and running as best possible is BIOS updates and other software upgrades. The v1.22 update has been stable so far, and I haven’t seen any issues. Hopefully this guide on how to upgrade your MS-01 will help any who might struggle with the documentation from Minisforum.