I have/had an 8-disk md raid 6, /dev/md0. At some point over the weekend, two of the disks suddently became marked as "spare" and the other has disappeared completely (at least as far as mdadm is concerned). All eight disks seem to be just fine, so I think the data is okay, and if I could just convince it to start the array with all 8 disks, I actually think everything would be fine. However, everything I've tried has come to nothing, and now I think I am stuck. Is there some way to just "force" is to change the two spare disks from "spare" to "active", and then let it go? Here's what I think are relevant details: The RAID is/was composed of /dev/sd[bcdefghi]1. /proc/mdstat says: # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid6] md0 : inactive sdc1[1] sdd1[10] sdi1[8] sdg1[5] sdf1[4] sde1[3] sdh1[2] 13674583552 blocks unused devices: <none> # So, here, sdb is the only one missing. However, if I try to start the array # mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 mdadm: /dev/sdi1 has no superblock - assembly aborted # So, I check /dev/sdi1: # mdadm --examine /dev/sdi1 /dev/sdi1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 6b8b4567:327b23c6:643c9869:66334873 Creation Time : Mon Jun 28 10:46:51 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 1953511936 (1863.01 GiB 2000.40 GB) Array Size : 11721071616 (11178.09 GiB 12002.38 GB) Raid Devices : 8 Total Devices : 6 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Mon Aug 20 12:10:18 2012 State : clean Active Devices : 5 Working Devices : 6 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 297da62d - correct Events : 59235337 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 8 8 129 8 spare /dev/sdi1 0 0 0 0 0 removed 1 1 8 33 1 active sync /dev/sdc1 2 2 8 113 2 active sync /dev/sdh1 3 3 8 65 3 active sync /dev/sde1 4 4 8 81 4 active sync /dev/sdf1 5 5 8 97 5 active sync /dev/sdg1 6 6 0 0 6 faulty removed 7 7 0 0 7 faulty removed 8 8 8 129 8 spare /dev/sdi1 # The fact that that command worked on /dev/sdi1 indicates that there is, in fact, a superblock, doesn't it? At any rate, going from the output of --examine on sdi1, it would seem that /dev/sdd1 is also not working. So, # mdadm --examine /dev/sdd1 /dev/sdd1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : 6b8b4567:327b23c6:643c9869:66334873 Creation Time : Mon Jun 28 10:46:51 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 1953511936 (1863.01 GiB 2000.40 GB) Array Size : 11721071616 (11178.09 GiB 12002.38 GB) Raid Devices : 8 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 0 Update Time : Mon Aug 20 12:10:21 2012 State : clean Active Devices : 5 Working Devices : 5 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 297da583 - correct Events : 59235338 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 10 8 49 -1 spare /dev/sdd1 0 0 0 0 0 removed 1 1 8 33 1 active sync /dev/sdc1 2 2 8 113 2 active sync /dev/sdh1 3 3 8 65 3 active sync /dev/sde1 4 4 8 81 4 active sync /dev/sdf1 5 5 8 97 5 active sync /dev/sdg1 6 6 0 0 6 faulty removed 7 7 0 0 7 faulty removed # Which would seem to indicate that sdd1 is fine, too. So, then, what about sdb1? # mdadm --examine /dev/sdb1 mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb1. # Okay, fine, maybe something actually has happened to sdb1. However, since it's a RAID6, having that one bad disk should be survivable. If I could just get the other two disks (sdi1 and sdd1) to not be spares. --- Mike VanHorn Senior Computer Systems Administrator College of Engineering and Computer Science Wright State University 265 Russ Engineering Center 937-775-5157 michael.vanhorn@xxxxxxxxxx http://www.cecs.wright.edu/~mvanhorn/ -- 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