Thank you, thank you, thank you...

After reading your post I went and checked in the config menus for the RAID (it's the Dell Perc2 controller) and found an option labelled "force on-line". I tried it and it worked, the machine is now up and running with 18Gb of disk again.

Needless to say I am backing up the missing data as I speak.

I must go and find some docs for my RAID controller to find out why it would suddenly mark a drive as offline.


And to think I tossed the drive in the trash earlier today...

I will obviously still be buying myself 4 new 18Gb drives though.