I'm not a server expert but i doubt that disabling the speaker within BIOS, if such options are even possible, would stop a post and video output. I also don't see how a dead cmos battery would stop post as i have one iomega server i play with has dead RTC cuircuit so can't keep time and i've booted it successfully without cmos battery installed. So i'd suggest there is something else going on with your hardware that you need to fault find... As a first step, i'd take the system to minimum needed to post (2 DIMM, 1 CPU and no cards or HDD's) and see if you can get to BIOS. Then put one item at a time back into the system and get see if you can get into BIOS with each addition... The item that causes post failure is the faulty item but if a minimum system can't post, it may be the psu, mobo, cpu or dimm...   I also understand that the RAID setup is actually stored as metadata on the HDD's themselves while the RAID card knows these specific HDD are inserted into the slots. As the RAID metadata is on the HDD's themselves, they can be moved to another (compatible) system where the HDD would be seen as a foriegn configuration. After importing this foriegn configuration, you would have access to your data.  But i have not played with moving HDD between RAID cards in other systems so don't know the finer points of compatability. If anything goes wrong you may still loose dataa so not having a backup is asking for trouble... (So now i should listen to my own words and go do a backup now :emotion-1: )
Dell Poweredge Server 1600.My server power on, but I get no post, no video, and no beeps because someone disabled the speaker in BIOS.I've been told to see if the CMOS battery is dead, but we have some important stuff that wasn't backed up on the drives.
Will I lose my RAID settings if I remove the CMOS BATTERY?