. . when there are read errors on one disk of t RAID-1 array?

In my opinion it kicks the bad disk out of the array and screams like mad about being degraded.

Apparently my opinion is not universal. Linux software RAID, for instance, kicks the drive out but says nothing (though I'm sure there's an add on that will cause it to blow the horn or something).

But this is worse.

Dell Precision T3400 running Windows XP Pro. Bad read on one disk. Did nothing - but the system wouldn't boot after a power failure. No messages, no nothing, but wouldn't finish chkdsk until after running an hours worth of diagnostics to determine which disk had problems and remove it.

May explain why there were some strange errors with Outlook.

Dell blames this on Windows XP.

I've got a bunch of systems out there set up with software RAID, and I doubt anyone's monitoring them - though I've given them all instructions on how to do it.