The Latest: DMV blames multiple drive failures for outage

ROSEVILLE, Calif. – The Latest on a computer outage affecting the California Department of Motor Vehicles (all times local):

2:30 p.m.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles says a computer failure that crippled more than half its offices around the state was caused by multiple hard drive failures in both primary and backup systems.

DMV spokesman Jaime Garza says the department maintains disaster recovery systems but the systems were not designed to handle the loss of multiple hard drives over a short period of time. It was not immediately clear what caused the disks to fail.

Garza says the outage began Monday, but some offices also had trouble Friday because of a scheduled security upgrade.

More than 100 field offices remain hampered by the outage. The affected offices are still able to provide driving tests and some can process driver’s license matters but not vehicle registrations. Online services are still functioning.

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12 p.m.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles is no longer saying that field offices will return to normal operations on Wednesday following a catastrophic computer failure.

The agency initially said on its website that offices would come online throughout the morning, but later revised the statement to remove estimates for a return to normal.

More than 100 field offices remain hampered by an unspecified hardware failure that took DMV computers offline.

The affected offices are still able to provide driving tests and some can process driver’s license matters but not vehicle registrations. Online services are still functioning.

DMV officials say the computers were not hacked or targeted. They have not explained what went wrong.

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9:45 a.m.

The California Department of Motor Vehicles says at more than 100 field offices remain hampered by limited operations after a catastrophic computer failure.

The department said on its website Wednesday that it anticipates offices returning to normal operations throughout the morning.

DMV officials say crews rebuilt the system following a hardware failure. Officials say the computers were not hacked or targeted.

At the Roseville DMV office, people were lined up well before the office opened at 9 a.m. because the DMV said things would be back to normal on Wednesday but were upset that systems were not working when the office opened.

No signs were posted indicating that computers were not working, and Roseville officials couldn’t say when things would be back to normal.