Hello, I have a rather big problem with my Linux software RAID5. It consists of 4 SATA disks each 1 TB in size, resulting in a 3 TB RAID5 volume (/dev/md0 assembled from /dev/sd{b,c,d,e}1. Today, mdadm kicked disk sde1 from the RAID since the cable seemed to make problems. I shutdown the machine, replaced the cable and tried re-adding the disk, however, mdadm refused to add the drive. So I re-partioned sde1 and added it as a new devices, mdadm instantly started rebuilding the raid. Unfortunately, during the rebuild, mdadm decided to kick sdc1 and I have now ended up with two drives failing. I have tried re-adding sdc1 with the --re-add command, but mdadm again refuses to re-add the drive. I haven't changed anything since as I don't know what to do further. I don't want to make any further damage to the raid and hope that someone knows how to restore it. My primary question is whether mdadm actually deletes any important data on the remaining disks (sd{b,c,d}1) while rebuilding or whether it just writes data to the newly added disk sde1. mdadm is version 3.2.3, kernel is Linux 3.2.0 on Debian Wheezy. Can anyone give further advise? I'm attaching the output of mdadm -E /dev/sd{b,c,d,e}1. Kind Regards, Adrian
/dev/sdb1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 6db22c7b:7d9287e2:d01e5766:86e12a40 (local to host z6) Creation Time : Fri Apr 23 13:53:33 2010 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 976759936 (931.51 GiB 1000.20 GB) Array Size : 2930279808 (2794.53 GiB 3000.61 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Wed Feb 15 13:27:31 2012 State : clean Active Devices : 2 Working Devices : 3 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : c0bf6492 - correct Events : 311622 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 0 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 65 4 spare /dev/sde1 /dev/sdc1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 6db22c7b:7d9287e2:d01e5766:86e12a40 (local to host z6) Creation Time : Fri Apr 23 13:53:33 2010 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 976759936 (931.51 GiB 1000.20 GB) Array Size : 2930279808 (2794.53 GiB 3000.61 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Wed Feb 15 13:25:25 2012 State : clean Active Devices : 3 Working Devices : 4 Failed Devices : 1 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : c0bf6411 - correct Events : 311617 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 3 8 33 3 active sync /dev/sdc1 0 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 8 33 3 active sync /dev/sdc1 4 4 8 65 4 spare /dev/sde1 /dev/sdd1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 6db22c7b:7d9287e2:d01e5766:86e12a40 (local to host z6) Creation Time : Fri Apr 23 13:53:33 2010 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 976759936 (931.51 GiB 1000.20 GB) Array Size : 2930279808 (2794.53 GiB 3000.61 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Wed Feb 15 13:27:31 2012 State : clean Active Devices : 2 Working Devices : 3 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : c0bf64b0 - correct Events : 311622 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 0 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 65 4 spare /dev/sde1 /dev/sde1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 6db22c7b:7d9287e2:d01e5766:86e12a40 (local to host z6) Creation Time : Fri Apr 23 13:53:33 2010 Raid Level : raid5 Used Dev Size : 976759936 (931.51 GiB 1000.20 GB) Array Size : 2930279808 (2794.53 GiB 3000.61 GB) Raid Devices : 4 Total Devices : 4 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Wed Feb 15 13:27:31 2012 State : clean Active Devices : 2 Working Devices : 3 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : c0bf64c2 - correct Events : 311622 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 4 8 65 4 spare /dev/sde1 0 0 8 49 0 active sync /dev/sdd1 1 1 8 17 1 active sync /dev/sdb1 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 65 4 spare /dev/sde1