Question Questions about Removing CMOS Battery on a PC with RAID 1 SSD Drives

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
T

ThorPan

Feb 24, 2024
5
0
10
I want to use RAID 1 on a new Dell XPS PC using two 2 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD drives and Intel RST. This will be a new PC with the OS already installed on the primary SSD drive and the other 2 TB drive will be empty. Creating a RAID 1 drive will be relatively easy to do since all that basically needs to be done is to set up install the IRST software and enable RAID. The primary SSD drive should then automatically be cloned to the spare drive

I've been reading about people having problems with their RAID when they need to replace the CMOS battery. The RAID breaks and all of the data is lost on both SSD drives. Does that really only happen on a RAID 0 configuration and not on RAID 1 configurations? Will a RAID 1 be OK other than the fact that the RAID is corrupted? Basically, the data still exists on both drives and the PC can still boot up, but the RAID is broken and needs to be rebuilt?

What if I were to do a Ctrl-I at boot and break the RAID 1 prior to replacing the CMOS battery? Basically, that would make 2 identical drives, but they would no longer be part of the RAID? Would that allow me to boot from the primary drive after changing the battery, and then turn RAID back on and have it recreate the RAID using the primary drive as the master to duplicate onto the second drive?

Thanks for any assistance anyone may provide!!
 
ThorPan said:
I want to use RAID 1 on a new Dell XPS PC using two 2 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD drives and Intel RST. This will be a new PC with the OS already installed on the primary SSD drive and the other 2 TB drive will be empty. Creating a RAID 1 drive will be relatively easy to do since all that basically needs to be done is to set up install the IRST software and enable RAID. The primary SSD drive should then automatically be cloned to the spare drive

I've been reading about people having problems with their RAID when they need to replace the CMOS battery. The RAID breaks and all of the data is lost on both SSD drives. Does that really only happen on a RAID 0 configuration and not on RAID 1 configurations? Will a RAID 1 be OK other than the fact that the RAID is corrupted? Basically, the data still exists on both drives and the PC can still boot up, but the RAID is broken and needs to be rebuilt?

What if I were to do a Ctrl-I at boot and break the RAID 1 prior to replacing the CMOS battery? Basically, that would make 2 identical drives, but they would no longer be part of the RAID? Would that allow me to boot from the primary drive after changing the battery, and then turn RAID back on and have it recreate the RAID using the primary drive as the master to duplicate onto the second drive?

Thanks for any assistance anyone may provide!!
Click to expand...
What benefit do you believe you will get from RAID1 SSDs? RAID is not a replacement for backups for data security. If you can tolerate the hour of downtime that replacing the SSD, then RAID is not the right answer.
 
The purpose of the cmos battery is to retain the contents of the bios in the event that the pc is unplugged from power. They last a very long time because no power is needed when the pc is plugged in.
Problems resulting from cmos failure/replacement should not happen with raid-1. It certainly will with raid-0(striping)

Raid 1 is mirroring. It protects explicitly from a device failure. It is appropriate for servers where one can not afford any down time at all.
It is not a backup.
For that you need EXTERNAL backup.
 
ThorPan said:
I want to use RAID 1 on a new Dell XPS PC
Click to expand...
Why?

What specific benefit are you looking for with this RAID?

Unless you really really need the actual continued uptime, RAID 1 gives little or no benefit.
And any "RAID" still needs to be supplanted with an actual backup routine.

Given a good backup, the RAID 1 is not needed.
 
Thanks to all who responded!

I realize that RAID 0 is NOT the way to go since if one drive dies, you've lost everything! RAID 1 gives me 100% uptime since if one drive dies, the other drive continues on. The bad drive can be replaced in a matter of minutes and can automatically be set clone to the good drive after it's been installed. It may take awhile for IRST to add the new drive into the array while it clones it, but the PC is still usable during that time. And yes, backups are a good thing no matter how you have your drives configured, although it will take a LOT longer to restore a new drive from a cloned image backup than just putting in a new drive and letting the software take care of it for me. Yes, drives from different manufacturers is a great idea, but since I'm having this one custom built at the factory, it's just easier to have them install both drives there.

Some of the computer's documentation said that a RAID drive could successfully be put back together again by resetting the BIOS after changing the CMOS battery, but I was looking for a real world experience from someone.

So, I haven't actually seen anyone specifically respond to the questions I've asked. Surely someone knows the answer to this and has experienced this issue, and I only care about RAID 1 examples since I'm not doing RAID 0.
 
Do you actually need that instant continued uptime?
Few users outside of something like a webstore do.

And a RAID 1 still need to be supported by a real, full, backup routine.

If you can "suffer" through a whole hour of recovery from last nights backup, you don't need a RAID 1.
Physical drive fail is only one of the reasons for a backup, and not nearly the most common.

I literally had to do this a few weeks ago.
Recalcitrant software install also installed a bunch of malware. The BadStuff would NOT uninstall properly.

Recover from the 2AM backup...all was good.

A RAID 1 would have served no purpose with that.


To your question - Would a motherboard instantiated RAID 1 survive a CMOS battery replacement?
Maybe, maybe not.
The motherboard and its settings is the controlling entity. What happens if the motherboard dies, and you have to replace it?
 
I can't even remember the last time I heard of a motherboard dying on anyone, but that is where the backup would come into play. Unfortunately full backups do take awhile to make on a 2TB drive, especially if it's a clone. Using an internal HDD would probably speed that along some, but a good external SSD is also a possibility. Another thing to consider during the initial setup of the new machine.
 
ThorPan said:
I can't even remember the last time I heard of a motherboard dying on anyone, but that is where the backup would come into play. Unfortunately full backups do take awhile to make on a 2TB drive. Using an internal drive would probably speed that along some, but a good external SSD drive is also a possibility. Another thing to consider during the initial setup of the new machine.
Click to expand...
Apart from the initial full drive backup, my nightly incrementals take minutes, at most.

I can recover any of the 6 drives in my system, to the state it was in the last 30 days.

Automated on a schedule, directly to my NAS, nightly.


RAID 1 sounds like a good idea. But it pales in the face of all the other forms of data loss.
 
It's saved my butt several times since I've had to replace several drives over the years on this machine. Fortunately, HDD drives are extremely cheap!
 
Although a bit off topic, but most people mentioned performing backups of their data. I'd prefer to do an image copy of my RAID 1 drives to further ensure a speedy recovery should other than 1 of the RAID drives die. My preference is to have it automatically performed at least weekly onto a HDD drive since I don't have room in this new machine for any other type of drive. Any suggestions on the best software. Macrium, EaseUS, Acronis, and several others seem to be rather well rated. Any suggestions? Remember, automatically is the keyword here.

Thanks again!
 
ThorPan said:
Although a bit off topic, but most people mentioned performing backups of their data. I'd prefer to do an image copy of my RAID 1 drives to further ensure a speedy recovery should other than 1 of the RAID drives die. My preference is to have it automatically performed at least weekly onto a HDD drive since I don't have room in this new machine for any other type of drive. Any suggestions on the best software. Macrium, EaseUS, Acronis, and several others seem to be rather well rated. Any suggestions? Remember, automatically is the keyword here.

Thanks again!
Click to expand...
Given a good backup routine (automated Macrium or whatever), a RAID 1 is mostly irrelevant in the consumer space.

But the backup is the key function.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom