>

quoted text
> Almost every RAID system out there handles the sudden removal

> of a disk from the system pretty well.  Why?  Because it's EASY

> to create that "failure mode".  Problem is, in 25 years in this

> business, I don't recall having seen a hard disk fall out of a

> computer as a mode of actual failure (I did see a SCSI HBA fall

> out of a machine once, but that's a different story).

>

I had seen that disk-suddenly-out-of-computer failure once. Coincidently

enough, it was an OpenBSD system configured only for NAT, about 6 years ago.
The IDE hard disk failed sometime at night. When we arrived on the

next day at office. Everything was working flawlessly until someone

ssh'ed to that machine. My guess is something has gone awry when

the syslog went to write that new connection and suddenly the OS

discovered that was no HD present.
Surprisingly enough, the onboard IDE controller survived, but after installing

the new disk, we found the parallel IDE cable faulty and it had to be replaced

also.
It was not a RAID system though...