help! LHNetserver Pro Server-1 disk in Raid5 crashed, an i just got the job!

[Luke_4]

Pleease help.
HP LH PRO NETSERVER BOUGHT IN 1997.
200 PENTIUM PRO,
128MB RAM ???ha ha!

RUNNING 3 ( 4.2GB) HD???s IN A RAID 5 HP NETRAID ARRAY.
RUNNING WIN NT4 SERVER, SP6(6A?)

RUNNING 24/7 FOR 4 YEARS!
1 of the hard disks has failed! the middle #2 disk.

The SCSI adapter in the HPNetRaid BOIS configuration utility states both remaining drives are Logical-no Hot Swap is installed in current configuration of adapter.
THEREFORE - NO HOT SPARE SET UP IN ADAPTER?

HP techs in TX. said;
ALSO - CORRUPTION COULD OCCURE IF CARD REALLY IS NOT CONFIGURED AND YOU TRY TO REBUILD ???UTILITY SHOULD SHOW A GLOBAL HOT SPARE OR A SPECIFIC SPARE, OTHERWISE, dont try to rebuild.

Current adapter config. can be changed, but:
They are not sure if you can crash 1 disk and reconfigure the card on the fly to rebuild a failed disk or add a disk to the HOT SWAP pool.

HP MANAUAL SAYS-ORIGINAL CONFIG. IS LOST IF YOU RE CONFIG ON THE FLY! CAN ONLY PRINT IT BEFORE RE-CONFIG.

SCSI NETRAID MAY NOT BE SET UP OR OPTIMIZED CORRECTLY, AS WE HAVE NOT FOUND ORIGINAL RECORDS, AND BIOS TOOL SHOWS RAID 5 & NO HOT SPARES.
Does this mean I cant pop in a new drive and use utility to rebuild FOR SURE?

SYSTEM IN A RAID 5. WITH 1 BAD DISK IN THE MIDDLE-WHAT DID SYSTEM DO? GO TO RAID 1?
GO TO RAID 0 ?

BOTH DISKS SEEM TO WORK AT IDNETICAL MOMENTS OF ACTIVITY.(LIGHTS FLASH AT SAME TIME IN SAME LENGTHS)

Running HP internal tape backup-running on Seagate Backup Exec. If I must restore from
this, do I ignore HP UTILITY and go to Seagate cdrom utility?

Data is critical and I have 3 new disks, but not confident of the heavily fragged state of curreent hard drives(2)which are still running 24/7.
Pleeeaase help mee......oh the stress....
Thank you.

[BR642007 · Accepted solution]

Allison,

Don't panic. If a harddisk has failed in a netserver LH-Pro with a netraid-controller with a Raid5 config you can replace it and start the rebuild.
Before doing so, please check the firmware version of the netraid controller. A.03.00 and earlier could give you some problems when rebuilding. Also check the remaining 2 disks for media error (look at the properties of the physical disk in netraid assistant or netraid express tools). If one of them has media errors the rebuild will probably fail and the only way around is to replace that disk also, recreate the logical drives, initialize, reinstall OS and restore from backup.
The array is still operating as a RAID5, only in degraded state now, another disk failure will reslt in data loss.