CMOS battery is dead, would that effect the Hard Drive(s)?

Question

CMOS battery is dead, would that effect the Hard Drive(s)?

Answer 1

Information about what hard drives you have is stored by the BIOS in cmos memory when you shut down. If the cmod battery is dead, every time you turn off your computer, it will forget it has hard drives (but the hard drives themselves will remain fine), just you have to tell the bios about them every time.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

I am pretty sure it can. I had turned off the power adaptor that my computer was plugged onto and the battery must have discharged since it was 2 or 3 months that it was off. The speed was very slow - maybe 20 minutes to boot up, even longer to get into a program like Word. And it doesn't help when you try to run other things at the same time. Probably had told Word to start 10 times and of course it never did. Finally I decided to let it alone after a clean boot and just let it recharge. It did run an automatic update to something and too a long time, overnight, when I told it to reboot. But now it is running like normal. I hope leaving the power on to keep the battery charged up will prevent this from happening again. I'll be back if that doesn't work and tell you all about it.

Answer 4

when your cmos battery dies and power is removed from cpu all settings are lost. The battery lasts for long time (5-8 years) so it is not something everyone looks for in troublshooting, but if your computer tells you the battery is dead, go ahead and replace it, then you will have to adjust all the settings in bios again and set up windows. I do not know if there is a way to salvage or restore the settings from before when battery dies. If possible take the drive with information you need and put in different machine or an external enclosure to copy information and then set up windows at least you can salvage the data possibly.

Answer 5

Yes. The hard drive controller is most likely onboard, and any bios abnormality in your case would be caused by the watch battery in your computer. It's a simple and cheap fix.

Answer 6

CMOS battery is only important for getting or maintaining the computer's RTC and some BIOS setup...if it is dead, then your date is probably 1970, and you are always having the default BIOS settings...In the case of hard drive, i've never heard of that case...I have a friend with no CMOS battery and his comp ran just as good as those with CMOS batt..

Answer 7

Any of the following symptoms indicate that something has gone wrong with your computer. In the best-case scenario, that something is going to be the CMOS battery. In the worst case, the hard drive could be crashing. Some symptoms include:

The clock losing time

A noted loss of memory, disk, or system information

Error messages about CMOS RAM, memory size, or disk drive configuration

A long beep at startup, followed by an error message or messages

An error message indicating the machine has lost its Setup or CMOS setting

The system won't boot up

*The clock losing time is almost always attributed to a weak CMOS battery and generally is the first warning sign. Heed it and buy a replacement. If you receive the error message about the settings, it's likely the battery is already dead. With all the other symptoms, you may want to test the battery before you replace it in case the hard drive is the real culprit.

If you're still having problems after replacement, the system may not be recognizing some CMOS settings or components. The AutoDetect feature available with many BIOS programs may not be able to configure everything on its own.



There are other possible situations. If the computer runs slower than before you replaced the CMOS, the cache settings may be incorrect. Rerun setup and enable the internal cache. If an error message pops up that reads Invalid Configuration Error . . . In Setup, check and make sure everything that is connected to the system via a cable is listed in setup. Usually this error message indicates a peripheral device, such as a diskette or tape drive, is connected to the system but is not functioning properly.



If you can't access the hard drive, it may be because the system doesn't know the hard drive exists. If this happens, it probably is lacking the drive specifications. Proceed with caution. If you enter the wrong information in the CMOS setup screen, you can do some serious damage. Do not guess. If you don't already have the disk specifications written down, check the computer or hard drive manual. Then call technical assistance. One way to avoid this is to find out the specs in advance and keep them in a safe place. Include the number of heads, cylinders, and sectors, the Write Precomp (WP) setting, and the Landing Zone (LZ) setting. Without this information you must get help from a technician.

~Cheers~