Hello Dave, many thx for your help and your explainations. The first step seems to work. Am i right? Therefore the next step is to readd the missing sdd4 (mdadm --add /dev/md2 /dev/sdd4) mdadm -A /dev/md2 -R /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb4 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdf4 /dev/sde4 mdadm: /dev/md2 has been started with 5 drives (out of 6). ------------- output of dmesg mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.422907] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.422916] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.540433] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.540443] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.561874] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.561884] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.562283] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9884.562292] mdadm: sending ioctl 1261 to a partition! [ 9885.381902] md: md2 stopped. [ 9885.431051] md: bind<sdb4> [ 9885.431185] md: bind<sdc4> [ 9885.436744] md: bind<sdf4> [ 9885.437110] md: bind<sde4> [ 9885.437415] md: bind<sda4> [ 9885.518260] raid5: device sda4 operational as raid disk 0 [ 9885.518264] raid5: device sde4 operational as raid disk 4 [ 9885.518266] raid5: device sdf4 operational as raid disk 3 [ 9885.518267] raid5: device sdc4 operational as raid disk 2 [ 9885.518269] raid5: device sdb4 operational as raid disk 1 [ 9885.518644] raid5: allocated 6386kB for md2 [ 9885.518843] 0: w=1 pa=0 pr=6 m=1 a=2 r=6 op1=0 op2=0 [ 9885.518847] 4: w=2 pa=0 pr=6 m=1 a=2 r=6 op1=0 op2=0 [ 9885.518849] 3: w=3 pa=0 pr=6 m=1 a=2 r=6 op1=0 op2=0 [ 9885.518851] 2: w=4 pa=0 pr=6 m=1 a=2 r=6 op1=0 op2=0 [ 9885.518853] 1: w=5 pa=0 pr=6 m=1 a=2 r=6 op1=0 op2=0 [ 9885.518855] raid5: raid level 5 set md2 active with 5 out of 6 devices, algorithm 2 [ 9885.518871] RAID5 conf printout: [ 9885.518872] --- rd:6 wd:5 [ 9885.518874] disk 0, o:1, dev:sda4 [ 9885.518876] disk 1, o:1, dev:sdb4 [ 9885.518877] disk 2, o:1, dev:sdc4 [ 9885.518879] disk 3, o:1, dev:sdf4 [ 9885.518880] disk 4, o:1, dev:sde4 [ 9885.518894] md2: Warning: Device sde4 is misaligned [ 9885.518896] md2: Warning: Device sdf4 is misaligned [ 9885.518920] md2: detected capacity change from 0 to 14957451673600 [ 9885.520484] md2: unknown partition table --- mdadm -D /dev/md2 /dev/md2: Version : 1.2 Creation Time : Tue Feb 5 17:44:45 2013 Raid Level : raid5 Array Size : 14606886400 (13930.21 GiB 14957.45 GB) Used Dev Size : 2921377280 (2786.04 GiB 2991.49 GB) Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 5 Persistence : Superblock is persistent Update Time : Tue Feb 5 17:44:45 2013 State : clean, degraded Active Devices : 5 Working Devices : 5 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 512K Name : mfsnode1:2 (local to host mfsnode1) UUID : e84f0346:3f5ff3f1:507b6f9c:0fa02c63 Events : 0 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 0 8 4 0 active sync /dev/sda4 1 8 20 1 active sync /dev/sdb4 2 8 36 2 active sync /dev/sdc4 3 8 84 3 active sync /dev/sdf4 4 8 68 4 active sync /dev/sde4 5 0 0 5 removed ----- -- 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