Re: Paranoia about DegradedArray

[Hal Vaughan <hal@thresholddigital.com>]

On Thursday 30 October 2008, Hendrik Boom wrote:
...
> > I've had trouble with removing drives if I didn't manually fail
> > them. Someone who knows the inner workings of mdadm might be able
> > to provide more information on that.
>
> I wonder if /dev/hdc3 still needs to be manually failed.  I wonder if
> it is even possible to fail a removed drive...


Try adding it.  If it works, then you're okay -- assuming the drive is 
okay.  If it doesn't work, you'll get an error message and it won't add 
it.

> > Yes, paranoia is a good thing in system administration.  It's kept
> > me from severe problems previously!
>
> And paranoia will make sure I have two complete backups before I
> actually do any of this fixup.

I've learned, among other things, to not trust RAID5 with mdadm.  I've 
also learned that even with RAID1, I have a full backup elsewhere.  I 
stick with RAID1 so if it blows, as long as one drive is still okay, I 
can always remount it as a regular drive.


Hal