RAID Controller failure

raid controller failure
Raid controllers come in two basic forms; as a discrete RAID card which can be purchased as a single component, or built into a storage device such as a NAS device, or a storage server such as Infortrend.
In the early 1990s it was common to use more than one RAID controller in a server, such was the high failure rate of these cards. One of the commonest RAID configurations was Disk Duplexing; RAID 1, but with each hard drive running off its own controller.

More currently, RAID controllers do not often suffer from outright hardware failure: but they are known to cause problems following a firmware update.

Additionally, they are prone to firmware corruption, which can damage the file system or the RAID parameters – or both.

We see more RAID controller failures in external network attached storage (NAS) devices such as LaCie than we do in servers.