Network Server will not boot after drive failure in Raid 5-Critical

[LRB45]

We have a dell Poweredge 1800 with a 3-disk SATA(250Gb) Raid 5 array using the Dell CERC SATA 1.5/6CH COntroller V4.1.

Yesterday the server went down and after checking the Array utility it appeared Disk 2 was Bad. I bought a new SATA2 320 Gb drive to replace with. Upon connecting the new drive rebuild failed and the Array utility shows the Array as missing that drive.
So far I have rescanned the drives and ran a Initialize drive on the new disk. Is there something additional needed to get the new drive added into the array?
The server will not boot up and shows a "missing, rebuilding or degraded" report and then fails to boot up leaving us with no DC or exchange.

 

[rclarke250]

try nominating the drive to the array as a hot spare, and see if rebuild starts. If you go into the tools at boot for the array, does the 320gb drive show up, just not in the array?

 

[LRB45]

I'll be going back today so I will try setting it up as a hot drive and see how that works.
Correct, the 320 does show up in the utility but not in the array.

I'm far from an expert on this so any insight / help is greatly appreciated.

 

[LRB45]

Well I set the new drive as a hotspare with no luck.
I also removed the new drive and left 1&3 in place and restarted but didn't help.

During the boot process it states: Array#0-RAID 5 465 Gb-Rebuilding (1 Array Found) but it looks like it never actually begins the rebuild process as I do not see any type of progress %.

As the array status shows a status of failed Is a Ctrl-R restore from within the utility an option or does that wipe out any data that is on the disks?

 

[karlisi]

RAID5 rebuilding can take very long, perhaps You waited not enough to see some progress?

===
Karlis
ECDL; MCSA

 

[LRB45]

Well it turns out that somehow 2 of the 3 drives were corrupt. We performed a Restore of the array and it finally booted and fortunately the server came back up.
It appears to be functioning properly aside from a few small issues which are likely better posted in the SBS2003 forum.