Reflashing firmware for preventive purposes

Question

This is a relatively common malfunction for the installed firmware in some old electrical devices to become corrupted. I often see this in repair videos, and there's often an easy fix - reflash the firmware using any available method or directly with a programmer. I even encountered this myself when my router failed out of the blue, after which it was repaired using the above method.

What about a preventative firmware reflash? Could, for example, reflashing the same firmware version five years after the last vendor's update reduce the chance of data corruption? If, for example, there is a constant chance of the appearance of corrupted bits, it would be reasonable, right? Or, on the contrary, could it carry some hardware risks for an old equipment (besides the standard risks of any reflashing)?

Answer 1

There are hard-to-quantify risks such as the risk that the data file you have does not really match what is in your product (and maybe the manufacturer is gone, and even if not, certainly they will not likely offer free support). And, of course, the risks of trying to flash in the first place, especially if it requires desoldering or removing a chip from a socket or special software.

'Somewhat experience-based' opinion is to leave it alone unless you're running a museum or have extreme operating conditions. EPROM and FLASH will generally outlive the product. On the other hand, I've had several issues with SEEPROM (usually data) failures and corruption.

As a special set of cases, I don't see much risk in (very infrequently) re-flashing a PC bios or similar (eg. DSLR) from an existing file that you have used before, but perhaps the benefit is not all that great either.