Hi list, Hope someone can give me the right direction on how to resolve this. I have 12 hard drives with RAID software. (250 GB each disk) I just know it was a 2 TB array. The old operating system which supported the array is no longer online. (just in case someone asks me to check the mdadm.conf file) >From what I can see with mdadm,is that there are 2 x RAID5 arrays of 990.72 GB each. (2 TB the whole array). So I believed that there is a RAID0 between both RAID5 arrays. Right? (RAID50) The first RAID5 group is composed by 5 discs, all of them active. Here is the post: (all /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4 /dev/sde4 /dev/sdf4 are similar and have the same UUID) # mdadm --examine /dev/sdb4 ---------------------------- /dev/sdb4: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.91.00 UUID : 48b86fc7:adbd7bbe:df7c7359:36df38af Creation Time : Tue Apr 24 18:14:28 2007 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 241873792 (230.67 GiB 247.68 GB) Array Size : 967495168 (922.68 GiB 990.72 GB) Raid Devices : 5 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 0 Reshape pos'n : 0 New Level : raid0 New Layout : left-asymmetric New Chunksize : 0 Update Time : Mon Nov 29 21:01:33 1999 State : clean Active Devices : 5 Working Devices : 5 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 42da3120 - correct Events : 0.61 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 3 4 0 active sync 0 0 3 4 0 active sync 1 1 22 4 1 active sync 2 2 33 4 2 active sync 3 3 34 4 3 active sync 4 4 56 4 4 active sync --------------------- But If I try to assemble this 1st RAID5 array: # mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4 /dev/sde4 /dev/sdf4 mdadm: Failed to restore critical section for reshape, sorry. Is not possible. I also try the build option: # mdadm --build /dev/md0 -l5 -n5 --assume-clean /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdd4 /dev/sde4 /dev/sdf4 mdadm: Raid level 5 not permitted with --build. On the other hand there is the second RAID5 group which outputs the following: ------------------ # mdadm --examine /dev/sdg4 /dev/sdg4: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 00.91.00 UUID : 384bd728:158c759c:e9be7911:01187b1f Creation Time : Tue Apr 24 18:14:48 2007 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 241873792 (230.67 GiB 247.68 GB) Array Size : 967495168 (922.68 GiB 990.72 GB) Raid Devices : 5 Total Devices : 6 Preferred Minor : 1 Reshape pos'n : 0 New Level : raid0 New Layout : left-asymmetric New Chunksize : 0 Update Time : Mon Nov 29 21:01:36 1999 State : active Active Devices : 4 Working Devices : 6 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 2 Checksum : 6eb7dc84 - correct Events : 0.65 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 1 89 4 1 active sync 0 0 0 0 0 faulty removed 1 1 89 4 1 active sync 2 2 90 4 2 active sync 3 3 91 4 3 active sync 4 4 120 4 4 active sync 5 5 121 4 5 spare 6 6 88 4 6 spare ------------------------------------ The 2nd RAID5 group was composed by 7 disks (I believed, as shown above). 1 disks is faulty and 2 disks are spare. But even though with the remaining 4 disks I could try to assemble the RAID5, but I have the same result as with the 1st RAID5. (mdadm: Failed to restore critical section for reshape, sorry.) Do you have any idea on how to re-assemble this RAID 50 array ? Thanks for any advice & help. Nicolas PS: # mdadm -V mdadm - v2.6 - 21 December 2006 Linux lab-suse 2.6.16.46-0.12-smp #1 SMP Thu May 17 14:00:09 UTC 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html