• Two drives marked as failed or missing
  • Array marked as “Offline” or “Critical”
  • System may hang on boot or drop storage access entirely
  • RAID 6 allows two failures — but only two
  • If both dropped simultaneously, the controller may panic
  • If the second dropped during rebuild, data may be in flux
  • Don’t assume one failed first — failure order matters
  • Don’t hot-swap without mapping order
  • Don’t try to rebuild without confirming block/parity maps

Two failures in RAID 6 doesn’t always mean loss — but the next step will decide that.