[TriLUG] OT: Failed Raid Controller

[Steve Hoffman]

Sorry for the Off Topic post, but I'm desperate for answers and either
google doesn't have much or I don't know what to search for.

I don't know if any of you use Hosted Solutions for your hosting
needs, but my company does and last night something strange happened
there, I don't know any details but the power went down (at least
once) and when it came back up all our machines came online except one
(the oldest one).  I did a little poking around and I believe that I
have it narrowed down to an failed RAID Controller.

The machine starts booting normally, but when it gets to our Compaq
Smart Array 3200 it attempts to initialize for ever.  When I initially
hit the power the lights built into this Proliant 6400R's onboard
drives flash, so I can see they are getting power.

My question is, can I recover this data from the drives?  I have
another controller available (almost identical except it's a single
channel controller).  I saw one post (the only relevant one I could
find) that said I could rebuild the array configuration from the
information stored on the disks.  I have no idea how to do this as
I've never had a RAID card go bad on me before.  I do have the Compaq
"Server Setup and Management" CD's V.5 which I see Array Diagnostic
utilities, but before I hose the system completely does anyone have
any experience with this and could offer a few condolences/pointers?

I do have the system back up and running on a different system
restored from tape backups so we're not down, but we would still like
to get this one back online AND (if possible) recover whatever data we
can.

Thanks in Advance

Steve

The OS is/was RH9 so I'm not completely off topic, but I don't
remember the exact drive configuration i.e. where / was and where /var
was (I think it was 4 drives in two RAID-1 Configurations) if that
helps anyone.