On Mon, 2008-06-09 at 08:25 +1000, NeilBrown wrote: > > eddie:~# mdadm --add /dev/md3 /dev/hde5 > > mdadm: add new device failed for /dev/hde5 as 3: Invalid argument > > Do you get any kernel messages when this fails? > dmesg | tail Yes indeed... md: hde5 has invalid sb, not importing! md: md_import_device returned -22 I have tried zeroing the superblock on hde5, (and mdadm -E /dev/hde5 confirms that it's gone) and then adding the drive again, but it doesn't change anything :( > > As you can see, only hde thinks it's a spare, when I want it to replace > > that 'removed' in all cases. What can I do? > > Given that the --add failed, this is normal. The device is added to > the array as a spare, then recover starts. Once recovery finished > the device so changed to be a full member of the array. Well, whatever's going on, it isn't being configured correctly as a spare, so no rebuild begins: md3 : active raid5 hda4[1] hdg4[2] 349702144 blocks level 5, 1024k chunk, algorithm 0 [3/2] [_UU] Again, any advice warmly received :) At least now each drive is from a different vendor, so I'm spreading my bets against a double-failure... Cheers, Gavin. -- 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