What You See
- “RAID 5: Offline” in Dell iDRAC, LSI BIOS, or HP ACU
- No physical drives appear failed
- Virtual disk missing or unmounted
What It Means
- The controller sees a mismatch in metadata or parity
- A disk may have dropped temporarily and rejoined out of sync
- A power loss or firmware bug may have created corruption in the config map
What Not To Do
- 🚫 Don’t initialize the array
- 🚫 Don’t force an import without verifying config first
- 🚫 Don’t assume a reboot will fix it
These actions can cause irreversible overwrite of your parity structure — especially dangerous in RAID 5.
What You Can Do Instead
- Use JeannieLite to safely extract drive maps
- Check for physical signs of timeout or cabling issues
- Pause, label, and log all drive statuses
- Reach out to ADR for a safe rebuild plan before taking action
Real-World Tip
We’ve recovered RAID 5 arrays that appeared offline with zero reported failures — because the issue wasn’t physical, it was metadata. But it only worked because no one rushed to rebuild.