Failed drives - any options or new drives / server?

Hi there,

We have a Poweredge 1800, 3 SCSI drives and 1 hotspare on a PERC 4/SC.

Came in this morning to find all 3 drives had failed (one was a recent install) and after checking RAID configuration utility that the drives had failed, which was the case, with a number of errors on each drive.

I've then reseated the drives, opened up the server and reseated the memory, blew out the dust etc.

After a call to Dell Tech Support, they initially suggested creating a new virtual drive, but after a while said 'your drives are gone - buy new drives'.

Feeling I had nothing to lose, I then forced the failed drives online and the server booted up and we were able to log in. After checking the OpenManage server it says the Virtual Disk is performing 'background initialization' which I'm led to believe will not erase the drives content(?)

Am I resigned to buying new drives or even a new server and restoring from backups? Would un-assigning the hotspare, which should be OK, and using it to rebuild in conjunction with the other drives work? Any ideas before we blow a wad of cash on new hardware?

many thanks,

Alex