Hi I suffered a coupleof (subsequent) multi-disk raid failures caused by hardware (not disk) issues. I now am reasonably confident the cause of the hardware issues has been remedied. Looking at one of the arrays I see differing event counters, but all close together. If I attempt --assemble that doesn't work, mdadm insists on only taking two of the six raid6 members into account.. Am I correct that an added --force will rectify that, or is a different course of action necessary ? mouse ~ # cat /proc/mdstat md1 : inactive sdi1[0](S) sdh1[5](S) sdb1[4](S) sdg1[2](S) sdc1[1](S) 4869638272 blocks mouse ~ # mdadm --examine /dev/sd[ihgcb]1|grep -i uuid UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f mouse ~ # mdadm --examine /dev/sd[ihgcb]1|grep -i events Events : 115315 Events : 115308 Events : 115312 Events : 115311 Events : 115315 It looks like it just takes the two 115315 ones, I figure. I need to tell it to consider all five, regardless of events counter. Is --assemble --force the right thing here? (Yes, there was a sixth member too, but I suffered a crash (kernel kicked a controller with 5 disks on it) during the re-adding of that one disk, so I have therefore deemed it unsafe to use for --assemble, so that one is marked and put away safely) cheers, Maarten For the sake of completeness, here's the full --examine outputs: /dev/sdb1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f Creation Time : Sun Jan 31 23:07:37 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 971932352 (926.91 GiB 995.26 GB) Array Size : 3887729408 (3707.63 GiB 3981.03 GB) Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 1 Update Time : Fri Sep 27 22:56:30 2013 State : clean Active Devices : 2 Working Devices : 2 Failed Devices : 4 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 5d28eaa8 - correct Events : 115315 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 4 8 17 4 active sync /dev/sdb1 0 0 8 209 0 active sync 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 17 4 active sync /dev/sdb1 5 5 0 0 5 faulty removed /dev/sdc1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f Creation Time : Sun Jan 31 23:07:37 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 971932352 (926.91 GiB 995.26 GB) Array Size : 3887729408 (3707.63 GiB 3981.03 GB) Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 6 Preferred Minor : 1 Update Time : Wed Sep 25 12:42:47 2013 State : clean Active Devices : 6 Working Devices : 6 Failed Devices : 0 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 5d25b882 - correct Events : 115308 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 1 8 129 1 active sync /dev/sdi1 0 0 8 209 0 active sync 1 1 8 129 1 active sync /dev/sdi1 2 2 8 65 2 active sync /dev/sde1 3 3 8 113 3 active sync /dev/sdh1 4 4 8 17 4 active sync /dev/sdb1 5 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 /dev/sdg1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f Creation Time : Sun Jan 31 23:07:37 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 971932352 (926.91 GiB 995.26 GB) Array Size : 3887729408 (3707.63 GiB 3981.03 GB) Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 1 Update Time : Fri Sep 27 22:40:25 2013 State : clean Active Devices : 3 Working Devices : 4 Failed Devices : 3 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 5d28e6f7 - correct Events : 115312 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 2 8 65 2 active sync /dev/sde1 0 0 8 209 0 active sync 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed 2 2 8 65 2 active sync /dev/sde1 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 17 4 active sync /dev/sdb1 5 5 0 0 5 faulty removed 6 6 8 113 6 spare /dev/sdh1 /dev/sdh1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f Creation Time : Sun Jan 31 23:07:37 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 971932352 (926.91 GiB 995.26 GB) Array Size : 3887729408 (3707.63 GiB 3981.03 GB) Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 1 Update Time : Fri Sep 27 22:23:09 2013 State : clean Active Devices : 4 Working Devices : 5 Failed Devices : 2 Spare Devices : 1 Checksum : 5d28e2ee - correct Events : 115311 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 0 0 8 209 0 active sync 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed 2 2 8 65 2 active sync /dev/sde1 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 17 4 active sync /dev/sdb1 5 5 8 81 5 active sync /dev/sdf1 6 6 8 113 6 spare /dev/sdh1 /dev/sdi1: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 0.90.00 UUID : e1b1c874:1000f29b:d02b8c28:1a80597f Creation Time : Sun Jan 31 23:07:37 2010 Raid Level : raid6 Used Dev Size : 971932352 (926.91 GiB 995.26 GB) Array Size : 3887729408 (3707.63 GiB 3981.03 GB) Raid Devices : 6 Total Devices : 5 Preferred Minor : 1 Update Time : Fri Sep 27 22:56:30 2013 State : clean Active Devices : 2 Working Devices : 2 Failed Devices : 4 Spare Devices : 0 Checksum : 5d28eb60 - correct Events : 115315 Layout : left-symmetric Chunk Size : 64K Number Major Minor RaidDevice State this 0 8 209 0 active sync 0 0 8 209 0 active sync 1 1 0 0 1 faulty removed 2 2 0 0 2 faulty removed 3 3 0 0 3 faulty removed 4 4 8 17 4 active sync /dev/sdb1 5 5 0 0 5 faulty 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