Hi, all. I have a Raid5 array with 5 disks in use and a 6th in reserve that I built using 3TB drives in 2019. It has been running fine since, not even a single drive failure. The system also has a 7th hard drive for OS, home directory, etc. The motherboard had four SATA ports, so I added an adapter card that has 4 more ports, with three drives connected to it. The server runs Debian that I keep relatively current.
Yesterday, I swapped a newer motherboard into the computer (upgraded my desktop and moved the guts to my server). I never disconnected the cables from the adapter card (whew, I think), so I know which four drives were connected to the motherboard. Unfortunately I didn't really note how they were hooked to the motherboard (SATA1-4 ports). Didn't even think it would be an issue. I'm reasonably confident the array drives on the motherboard were sda-sdc, but I'm not certain.
Now I can't get the array to come up. I'm reasonably certain I haven't done anything to write to the drives - but mdadm will not assemble the drives (I have not tried to force it). I'm not entirely sure what's up and would really appreciate any help.
I've tried various incantations of mdadm --assemble --scan, with no luck. I've seen the posts about certain motherboards that can mess up the drives, and I'm hoping I'm not in that boat. The "new" motherboard is a Asus Z96-K/CSM.
I assume using --force is in my future...I see various pages that say use --force then check it, but will that damage it if I'm wrong? If not, how will I know it's correct? Is the order of drives important with --force? I see conflicting info on that.
I'm no expert but it looks like each drive has the mdadm superblock...so I'm not sure why it won't assemble. Please help!
Thanks in advance.
--RJ
root@jackie:~# uname -a
Linux jackie 5.10.0-27-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.205-2 (2023-12-31) x86_64 GNU/Linux
root@jackie:~# mdadm --version
mdadm - v4.1 - 2018-10-01
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sda
/dev/sda: MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee)
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sda1
mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sda1.
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb: MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee)
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdb1
mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdb1.
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdc
/dev/sdc: Magic : a92b4efc Version : 1.2
Feature Map : 0x0
Array UUID : 74a11272:9b233a5b:2506f763:27693ccc
Name : jackie:0 (local to host jackie)
Creation Time : Sat Dec 8 19:32:07 2018
Raid Level : raid5
Raid Devices : 5 Avail
Dev Size : 5860271024 (2794.39 GiB 3000.46 GB)
Array Size : 11720540160 (11177.58 GiB 12001.83 GB)
Used Dev Size : 5860270080 (2794.39 GiB 3000.46 GB)
Data Offset : 262144 sectors
Super Offset : 8 sectors
Unused Space : before=261864 sectors, after=944 sectors
State : clean
Device UUID : a2b677bb:4004d8fb:a298a923:bab4df8a
Update Time : Fri Jan 19 15:25:37 2024
Bad Block Log : 512 entries available at offset 264 sectors
Checksum : 2487f053 - correct
Events : 5958
Layout : left-symmetric
Chunk Size : 512K
Device Role : spare
Array State : AAAAA ('A' == active, '.' == missing, 'R' == replacing)
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdc1
mdadm: cannot open /dev/sdc1: No such file or directory
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sde
/dev/sde: MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee)
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sde1
mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sde1.
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdf
/dev/sdf: MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee)
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdf1
mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdf1.
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdg
/dev/sdg: MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] : 4294967295 sectors at 1 (type ee)
root@jackie:~# mdadm --examine /dev/sdg1
mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sdg1.
root@jackie:~# lsdrv
PCI [ahci] 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 9 Series Chipset Family SATA Controller [AHCI Mode]
├scsi 0:0:0:0 ATA ST3000VN007-2E41 {Z7317D1A}
│└sda 2.73t [8:0] Partitioned (gpt)
│ └sda1 2.73t [8:1] Empty/Unknown
├scsi 1:0:0:0 ATA Hitachi HUS72403 {P8GSA1WR}
│└sdb 2.73t [8:16] Partitioned (gpt)
│ └sdb1 2.73t [8:17] Empty/Unknown
├scsi 2:0:0:0 ATA Hitachi HUA72303 {MK0371YVGSZ9RA}
│└sdc 2.73t [8:32] MD raid5 (5) inactive 'jackie:0' {74a11272-9b23-3a5b-2506-f76327693ccc}
└scsi 3:0:0:0 ATA ST32000542AS {5XW110LY}
└sdd 1.82t [8:48] Partitioned (dos)
├sdd1 23.28g [8:49] Partitioned (dos) {d94cc2c8-037a-49c5-8a1e-01bb47d78624}
│└Mounted as /dev/sdd1 @ /
├sdd2 1.00k [8:50] Partitioned (dos)
├sdd5 9.31g [8:53] ext4 {6eb3b4d0-8c7f-4b06-a431-4c292d5bda86}
│└Mounted as /dev/sdd5 @ /var
├sdd6 3.96g [8:54] swap {901cd56d-ef11-4866-824b-d9ec4ae6fe6e}
├sdd7 1.86g [8:55] ext4 {69ba0889-322b-4fc8-b9d3-a2d133c97e5e}
│└Mounted as /dev/sdd7 @ /tmp
└sdd8 1.78t [8:56] ext4 {4ed408d4-6b22-46e0-baed-2e0589ff41fb}
└Mounted as /dev/sdd8 @ /home PCI [ahci]
06:00.0 SATA controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88SE9215 PCIe 2.0 x1 4-port SATA 6 Gb/s Controller (rev 11)
├scsi 6:0:0:0 ATA Hitachi HUS72403 {P8G84LEP}
│└sde 2.73t [8:64] Partitioned (gpt)
│ └sde1 2.73t [8:65] Empty/Unknown
├scsi 7:0:0:0 ATA ST3000VN007-2E41 {Z7317D46}
│└sdf 2.73t [8:80] Partitioned (gpt)
│ └sdf1 2.73t [8:81] Empty/Unknown
└scsi 8:0:0:0 ATA ST3000VN007-2E41 {Z7317JTX}
└sdg 2.73t [8:96] Partitioned (gpt)
└sdg1 2.73t [8:97] Empty/Unknown
root@jackie:~# cat /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
# This configuration was auto-generated on Wed, 27 Nov 2019 15:53:23 -0500 by mkconf
ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=1.2 spares=1 name=jackie:0 UUID=74a11272:9b233a5b:2506f763:27693cccr
