Leslie Rhorer <lrhorer <at> satx.rr.com> writes: > Any failed drives are moved to spare status. Issue the `mdadm -D > /dev/mdX` command, and it will probably show 3 failed drives. You are correct. > > Why are three drives assumed to be spares? > > It's not assumed. If was almost surely forced by md / mdadm. Is there any way to get md or mdadm to tell me how it is making this decision? If I run "mdadm -Afv /dev/md0 /dev/sd[bcdef]1" I see this in messages: Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: md0 stopped. Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: unbind<sdd1> Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: export_rdev(sdd1) Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: unbind<sdb1> Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: export_rdev(sdb1) Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: unbind<sdc1> Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: export_rdev(sdc1) Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: unbind<sdf1> Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: export_rdev(sdf1) Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: unbind<sde1> Jun 11 07:22:10 fileserver kernel: md: export_rdev(sde1) Jun 11 07:22:27 fileserver kernel: md: md0 stopped. Jun 11 07:22:27 fileserver kernel: md: bind<sde1> Jun 11 07:22:27 fileserver kernel: md: bind<sdf1> Jun 11 07:22:27 fileserver kernel: md: bind<sdc1> Jun 11 07:22:27 fileserver kernel: md: bind<sdb1> Jun 11 07:22:27 fileserver kernel: md: bind<sdd1> All the ATA and SCSI messages in the log appear normal -- there are no warnings or errors that I can see. > No doubt at least one of the drives probably has enough > info on hand to be able to recover most if not all of the information. You > should be able to force assemble (-A -f) the array using at least 4 drives, > or perhaps all six. I tried all combinations of three out of the five drives, but at most two drives ever get used: # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[de]1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 2 drives - not enough to start the array. # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[bcd]1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 1 drive and 2 spares - not enough to start the \ array. # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[bce]1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 1 drive and 2 spares - not enough to start the \ array. # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[bcf]1 mdadm: No suitable drives found for /dev/md0 # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[cde]1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 2 drives and 1 spare - not enough to start the \ array. # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[cdf]1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 1 drive and 2 spares - not enough to start the \ array. # mdadm -Af /dev/md0 /dev/sd[def]1 mdadm: /dev/md0 assembled from 2 drives and 1 spare - not enough to start the \ array. Thanks for the advice, Dave -- 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
