Hi, in the past I used a raid1 with two 123,5GB drives for about 1,5 years now and never expierenced problems with the raid part... A month ago one drive fails (IRQ timeouts all the time) so I was thinking of a new system. I decided to start from the beginning, this time with: 2x RAID-1 (so 4 disks all together). I wanted a lvm (one big vg) over the two raid-arrays... So I created the 2 NEW raid arrays, but I started in one of the two arrays with only one disk and the second mirror disk was missing (because I had the old raid device (degraded due to the disk failure) with my old data which I wanted to copy to the new lvm and then use the old disk to complete the new raid array). At first everything went fine, but later on I noticed massive filesystem errors, so I deleted the new lvm and the 2 new raid1 arrays. I was happy that I still had my old raid1 array with the old data, so no data loss happend... Then I created the 2 raid arrays again but this time without the lvm, because I though the lvm part was the problem... I started again in the degraded mode with only one disk out of two in each array. This time the data seems to be ok, so I completed the frist new array with puting the seconds disk in. The sync process was ok but then I noticed problems again. If I want to read data I get massive filesystem errors... I was suprised and removed the mirror disk (the one I just hotadded). Now the data seems to be fine again, no data corruption, no filesystem errors... I tried the same on the second raid-array and notice the same strange errors... In the degraded one-disk mode the raid is ok, but if the second disk is added and resynced than I got these problems. On the second raid are some mp3, so I played some of them (to see if that are actually errors or bogus errors) and I noticed that the song skips every 2-3 seconds for 1-2 seconds. One could think that the read access to disc 1 is okay, but the half time disk2 should deliver the data and it doesn't... in the log the filesystem errors are reported when i am playing mp3s... Even some Files or directories aren't accessible anymore. (Even if they would, the data would be useless). If i "ls" in a directory inside the raid1 devices (with two synced disks) it says for example for about half the files: "perrmission denied" or "file not found" (on a ls *) (i am root!) Strage is, that the old raid is/was fine, I just can't build a new raid1, because after the disk sync I got these errors... Here a example filesystem errors I see (thousands in my log): Feb 21 01:27:52 services kernel: vs-5150: search_by_key: invalid format found in block 3783953. Fsck? Feb 21 01:27:52 services kernel: is_tree_node: node level 0 does not match to the expected one 1 Feb 21 01:27:52 services kernel: vs-5150: search_by_key: invalid format found in block 3783953. Fsck? ... (It can't be a filesystem error, because as soon as I remove a drive the errors are gone) My Setup is this: DEVICE /dev/hde /dev/hdf /dev/hdb /dev/hdg ARRAY /dev/md0 devices=/dev/hde,/dev/hdb ARRAY /dev/md1 devices=/dev/hdf,missing (that are only the two new arrays, the old one is deleted now!!!... /dev/md1 is working in this setup... md0 gives the error (because both disks are in)) I use: Debian Unstable with: linux-2.6.1 (vanilla +pnpbios patch), mdadm 1.4.0-3 (bugs.debian.org says there is no such bug in mdadm) and a reiserfs 3.6 partition on the md-devices. My hdd Setup is this: ide0: BM-DMA at 0xfc00-0xfc07, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA ide1: BM-DMA at 0xfc08-0xfc0f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio ide2: BM-DMA at 0xdc00-0xdc07, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio ide3: BM-DMA at 0xdc08-0xdc0f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio hda: IC35L060AVV207-0, ATA DISK drive hdb: IC35L120AVVA07-0, ATA DISK drive hde: IC35L120AVV207-1, ATA DISK drive hdf: IC35L120AVV207-1, ATA DISK drive hdg: IC35L120AVV207-0, ATA DISK drive hda: 120103200 sectors (61492 MB) w/1821KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100) hda: hda1 hda2 hdb: max request size: 128KiB hdb: 241254720 sectors (123522 MB) w/1863KiB Cache, CHS=65535/15/63, UDMA(100) hdb: unknown partition table hde: max request size: 1024KiB hde: 241254720 sectors (123522 MB) w/7965KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100) hde: unknown partition table hdf: max request size: 1024KiB hdf: 241254720 sectors (123522 MB) w/7965KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100) hdf: unknown partition table hdg: max request size: 1024KiB hdg: 241254720 sectors (123522 MB) w/1821KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100) hdg: unknown partition table Personalities : [raid1] md1 : active raid1 hdf[0] 120627264 blocks [2/2] [UU] md0 : active raid1 hde[0] 120627264 blocks [2/1] [U_] unused devices: <none> the raid (/mdadm) doesn't seem to detect this error... I am quite sure that is nothing with the drive or the pc... I use 4 drives with 2 raids, so it is not a "one drive is broken" thing. Please help me, because the data on the two arrays is quite important to me, so that running two normal disks which holds the data is no solution for me. I had a drive failure once and the raid saved me... I need the two new raid arrays... Maybe a kernel thing? 2.6.1 is not the latest... should I upgrade to 2.6.3? Could it be mdadm? Should I recompile it against my kernel? Thanks for your help... and sorry for my bad english :) best regard, Ralph - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html