Hi __The Problem__ I'm attempting to recover a RAID5 (6 disks) with zeroed superblocks. mdadm -C --assume-clean -f -e 1.2 -l 5 -p ls -c 128 -n6 But I'm unable to get the data offsets of some of the disks in the array to match what I had before: Diff of mdadm --examine /dev/sdb3 (which became /dev/sde3 after reboot) --- md3.sdb3.orig 2009-07-07 10:14:25.000000000 +0100 +++ md3.sde3.new 2009-07-07 10:14:27.000000000 +0100 @@ -2,26 +2,26 @@ Magic : a92b4efc Version : 1.2 Feature Map : 0x0 - Array UUID : 2b7ca9c9:c9fa9a28:086e0f83:90cbef62 + Array UUID : 679bc68c:aeb0464c:8f11e607:c8e58161 Name : hastur:3 (local to host hastur) - Creation Time : Thu Oct 18 14:46:47 2007 + Creation Time : Sun Jul 5 03:32:38 2009 Raid Level : raid5 Raid Devices : 6 - Avail Dev Size : 870353369 (415.02 GiB 445.62 GB) + Avail Dev Size : 870353233 (415.02 GiB 445.62 GB) Array Size : 4351765760 (2075.08 GiB 2228.10 GB) Used Dev Size : 870353152 (415.02 GiB 445.62 GB) - Data Offset : 136 sectors + Data Offset : 272 sectors Super Offset : 8 sectors State : clean - Device UUID : c4983266:9ee820fd:106bbf9d:20a69333 + Device UUID : 1b87acce:883de3fc:881f279e:e2b84a9b - Update Time : Mon Jun 29 21:05:55 2009 - Checksum : 5a501eb5 - correct - Events : 320840 + Update Time : Sun Jul 5 03:32:38 2009 + Checksum : 94ba3ae4 - correct + Events : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 128K - Array Slot : 0 (failed, 1, 2, failed, failed, 4, 5) - Array State : _uu_uu 3 failed + Array Slot : 0 (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) + Array State : Uuuuuu Data offset for this disk was originally 136, but on recreation, mdadm chooses 272... The array started off as RAID5 (5 disks plus a hot spare). One disk (array slot 4) failed about a year ago and was replaced. The array was grown to RAID5 (6 disks) shortly after. __The Question__ So, is there a way to force a particular data offset? (short of recompiling mdadm?) __Some things I've tried__ It seems to be feasible to *manually* tweak data_offset with a hexeditor. To test things I've created some sparse loopback devices of the correct size (dd seek) with just the first 1MB or so of data in each device. After updating data_offset and the checksum of the first disk I assembled the array and cryptsetup found its header. (Yay!) But does anyone know if other parts of the superblock are dependent on the data_offset value? Am I going to bork things horribly by fiddling with the data_offset? What data is present between the end of the superblock and the beginning of data? Thanks Mark -- 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