Re: Just received a fail event from mdadm (UncorrectableError), is my drive dead?

["Mike Garey" <random51k@gmail.com>]

alright, I've finally gotten around to replacing the failed drive (I
know, I know, should've done this as soon as it failed, but I've been
so busy I hadn't had a chance until now).  Anyway, the drive that
failed was a 160 gig Maxtor IDE, so I purchased another 160 gig Maxtor
drive to replace it, but I couldn't get the exact same drive, I
ordered the closest thing I could find.  I was just trying to copy
over the partition table from the working drive (hda) to the new drive
(hdc) by using:

sudo sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sudo sfdisk /dev/hdc

and I get the following:

Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
OK

Disk /dev/hdc: 19457 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track

sfdisk: ERROR: sector 0 does not have an msdos signature
/dev/hdc: unrecognized partition table type
Old situation:
No partitions found
Warning: given size (317155167) exceeds max allowable size (312576642)

sfdisk: bad input

dmesg shows the following:

hda: 320173056 sectors (163928 MB) w/7936KiB Cache, CHS=19929/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdc: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, UDMA(100)

so it seems the new drive (hdc) is slightly smaller than the current
working drive (hda)..  Does anyone have any suggestions of what to do?
I guess I could manually create the partition table to be similar to
the current drive, then copy over the contents of the current drive to
the new drive, then copy the partition table from the new drive to the
current drive and then get them to resync.. But I'm wondering if maybe
there's an easier way.  If anyone has any advice, please let me know..

Thanks,

Mike

On 10/30/06, martin f krafft <madduck@debian.org> wrote:
> also sprach John Keimel <john@apep.keimel.com> [2006.10.30.2000 +0100]:
> > Not to simply be a 'me too' reply, but reinforcement of Mike's
> > statement. If the drive comes back online, count yourself lucky and get
> > another drive ordered now while it's an easy task to rebuild.
> >
> > This error message from md IS YOUR WARNING. Drives very often give us
> > these warnings but we procrastinate on acting on them. Act now before
> > the rest of the array fails.
>
> I'd check the smartctl -a /dev/hdX output. But in any case, the
> other two are right. Also see question 19:
>
>   http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-mdadm/mdadm/trunk/debian/FAQ?op=file&rev=0&sc=0
>
> --
> Please do not send copies of list mail to me; I read the list!
>
>  .''`.   martin f. krafft <madduck@debian.org>
> : :'  :  proud Debian developer, author, administrator, and user
> `. `'`   http://people.debian.org/~madduck - http://debiansystem.info
>   `-  Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing systems
>
> "she was rather too intelligent and competent-looking to be
>  considered entirely beautiful, but all the more attractive because
>  of it."
>                            -- george spencer-brown, "a lion's teeth"
>
>
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