Possible Drive Crash?

[Jim Greene]

Had the following in my megaserv.log:

Adapter 0 Channel 0 Target 1:  Media Error Count=1, Other Error Count=0
[10/24/2004 (09:37:26)]:
        Adapter 0 Channel 0 Target 1: Sense Data: errCode=0x70  valBit=1 
segMent=0x00  SenseKey=3  ILI=0  EOM=0  FMRK=0  Address=0x0AF2C748  ASL=0x18 
cmdSpec=0x0000  ASC=0x11  ASCQ=0x02 FRUC Code + Sense Key 
Specific=0x80000000

Now the server is doing:
[10/25/2004 (13:52:18)]:
        Adapter 0 Logical Drive 0: Background Init is in PROGRESS 62%

What exactly is a Background Init?  And does doing one cause the read/write 
cache do be disabled while it's completing? Does it make disk access slow? 
My iowait is way higher than it should be right now.  This is on a PE2650 
with a Perc4/Dc running RH AS 3.0  Thanks

Jim