PE850 RAID 5 failed drive

[jandle]

I had a drive fail today. My controller is a PERC4eDC running RAID 5 and I had (4) 73GB Seagate Ultra 320 80-pin hot swap SCSI drives. I have ordered another drive and my questions are:

a.) Can my server run on just 3 drives?
b.) Do I have to do any additional configuring to make that happen?
c.) Once my new drives come in, do I just plug it in or do I have to configure the new drive to be a hot spare first?

Thanks,

 

[jandle]

I went into the PERC BIOS and was able to turn the alarm off so I could actually think. I then was able to see that the drive was being rebuilt. I left it alone overnight and when I came in the next morning it had finished rebuilding and everything was fine.

 

[bilbus]

Sure it will run just fine .. but slower on 3 drives.

Your now not redundent, so if another drive fails all your data is lost.