I have a Server 2003 which had 4 HDDs, 3 of which were in a software RAID5
(no RAID card) and 1 was unallocated spare. The first drive (disk 0) from the
RAID 5 failed and had to be disconnected from the system.

After disconnecting disk 0 and powering up the server, I would have expected
to see (in Comp. Man.) that disk 0 was foreign (and missing), disk 1 & 2 were
failed and disk 3 unallocated?

Instead I have disk 0 foreign and missing, disk 1 failed and disk 2
unallocated. With a mystery missing disk!

Does anyone have any hints on how to repair this? My first thought was to
take the spare disk and connected it to the disk 0 position and see what
happens. Since that's what it sounds like MS Server wants?

Also, the whole idea of having the spare disk was so that we could repair on
the fly, but from what Microsoft says you can only repair the software raid 5
by replacing the faulty disk. IE. you can't repair it by installing a disk on
a different controller position - you have to replace the faulty disk by
installing the new disk in to the same position?