Windows, or any other OS for that matter, will boot successfully from a degraded array. Windows itself has no knowledge of the array being optimal, degraded, or anything else--that's handled by the controller itself. The operating system doesn't even know anything about the individual disks attached, since again, it's all obfuscated by the controller's firmware.
My guess is that your bad drive has been going bad for a while, and has caused some silent data corruption prior to fully kicking the bucket. Or, the card itself is bad. Or, the driver is causing some problems as it deals with/attempts to report the fault condition. RAID is never a substitute for good backup procedures. RAID does nothing more than increase availability (and performance, depending upon a number of factors). It's no data-protection cure-all, as your situation may ultimately reveal. Greg > > I remain confused about why Windows will not complete a boot with a > degraded raid as I've been told it should. Any ideas would be helpful. > I > am sure I followed all the proper steps when I rebuilt this server some > time back. > > In the am I will begin the drive replacement business. Thank you for > any > suggestions. > Duncan
