On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 2:36 AM, Richard Scobie <richard@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Dexter Filmore wrote: >> >> Assuming one has 6 disks on two controllers and one dies, how does one >> tell the dead one? Which controller/port? > > There are probably more elegant ways, but I use smartctl -a on the failed > drive to find it's serial number and use this to find the location based on > where I installed the drives initially, which I note in a text file or a > label attached to the exterior of the case on machines with removable drive > trays. > Agreed, the best way is to know in advance what is what. At this point the safest thing to do is likely to create you documentation for the 5 working drives and assume the other one is the dead one. Unfortunately the only truly safe way to do that I know involves stopping the raid service. (You can try with it running but data destroying kernel bugs do occasionally show up when you read low-level data at the same time as you access the raid via live filesystem activity.) So I would: 1) Stop the raid (via mdadm I assume) 2) Try to read the serial number directly from your first drive. ie: hdparm -I /dev/sdb repeat for all 6. One should fail I assume. Make note of it. 3) If this is sata, pull the sata power cable for one of the drives. Repeat step 2, but when a new drive shows up failed, note which one it is physically. 4) Repeat until done. 5) Power off your system, hook everything back up exactly like it was and reboot. Make sure everything is like it was when you started. 6) And you now know which drive is failed. Sorry, but it is the only way I know. FYI: Disk racks that are made to hold raid arrays typically have an LED for each position. Then there is "find", "locate", or "blink" command that will cause that LED to blink. It is used for exactly this purpose. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- 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
