Filesystem corruption - hard disk exploded!

[compdoc]

On 6/28/19 8:16 AM, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users wrote:
> Measuring voltage without load is meaningless, you need to apply a
> resistor to the battery. However, most of the times I'm working on an
> opened PC, I preventively replace the battery. Why not replacing a
> battery that is still good, when you anyway do something on the PC,
> instead of waiting until it fails in the most unpleasant moment?

CMOS chips can run on one of those batteries for 3 to 5 years. Sometimes 
longer. Trying to emulate that kind of tiny load is meaningless. There 
virtually is no load. Its all about the voltage remaining. As with power 
supplies and hard drives, I've learned to only replace things when I can 
see or verify are actually bad. But that's just me.


> Sustainability and environmentalism might be reasons, but regarding the
> CMOS battery and the issues it could cause, those reasons aren't good
> enough for me. What looks like a broken mobo, power supply, hard
> disc, often is just a weak battery.

In repairing and maintaining business computer systems that run 24/7 for 
the last 15 years, I've never found a CMOS battery that causes the 
problems you describe.

When the batteries die, the CMOS forgets it settings and reverts to 
defaults. Many people use the defaults as normal settings, and board 
makers have learned to set things like enabling AHCI as default. That 
wasnt always the case.

It's possible that default settings can cause problems for odd cards and 
devices that are installed in a particular machine, so they require 
certain settings. That might be a problem.