Hard Drive Failed on RAID

[Steve]

We have a RAID 5 (3 disks) on a Dell with Win 2K advanced
Server set up. Last friday a block went bad on one of
the hard drives and since then the machine has not been
able to write to it. I cannot access any of my data on
this machine. Is it as simple as replacing the hard
drive then setting up the RAID again? I have not done
any of this before.

 

[Matt]

Steve,

Go to Windows Help and type in RAID disks, repairing. It
will tell you step by step what to do with the volume.

 

[Guest]

I did & am just a little hesitant before I have talked to
someone who actually has done this. The Help menu says
to reactivate the volume. In a book I have "Mastering
Win 2K Server it says to remove & replace the HD before
doing this. If I reactivate the volume what happens?
Does it redistribute the data around the bad block & make
that block innaccessable for further use? If I replace
the HD will I loose data?

 

[Matt]

When you replace the drive the parity and or data is
restored to it from the other drives in the volume. That
is the beauty of RAID.