On my raid 5 array I recently experienced a bit of strange behaviour. The array is made up out of 6 disks, of which one is hot-spare. All disks are 1 terabyte of 2 brands (WD and samsung), different types (EADS / EACS / spinpoint F1 and F3) and ages. The disks all report smart OK and I believe it . Anyway, recently I added the hot-spare (spinpoint F1) due to one of the disks periodically reporting smart failure/warning which I have ruled to be a heat issue coming from the silencer it was in + low airflow. To be safe, I added the hotspare. All disks have 0 formatting and are used RAW.
Now however, I moved the array to a new system (the same system, new install on a different disk). Keep in mind the old system still worked flawlessly at this point with the array and perhaps too would the new system if I had moved my mdadm.conf. However the new system reported 1 disk not part of the array (so 5 disk array, including the hot-spare and not containing one of the regular disks) which made me pass an "mdadm --assemble --scan /dev/md0 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf /dev/sdg". After, the array was deemed degraded and started rebuilding.....
It would appear a regular disk (WD EACS), that had previously NOT been giving any problems (not the heat issue or any other) suddenly reports with less sectors and not detected to be part of the array... in the old setup there were absolutely 0 problems with the disk. The disk also reports no reallocated sectors or anything else. No partitioning has been done inbetween.... I am at a loss what could be causing this. A full clean sweep of the disk still yields in lower sectors than all the other disks. Meanwhile the array is back-up now containing the hot spare, running in clean raid 5 mode.
before rebuilding the system (new install) already reported the disk not part of a raid array, when booting back into the old OS the array (and thus that disk) came up like a charm.. I did not check to see wether the disk also reported a lower size in the old system as I did not expect this problem. I can still boot into the old system and check which I will do possibly
Anyone have any clue what just happened with the array and perhaps a way to get the drive back in there (as hot-spare)? Easiest way would of course be to backup all data, simply toss the entire array and rebuild it a new while tinkering with partitioning. However as the array is 4 terabytes big I have no where to store the data inbetween and I do want to keep it. Any help appreciated .
Owyea, I forgot to mention, it';s the only disk fdisk doesn't say has partition table problems (all the other disks report not having one and having invalid flag 0x0000 on partition table 4)
Now however, I moved the array to a new system (the same system, new install on a different disk). Keep in mind the old system still worked flawlessly at this point with the array and perhaps too would the new system if I had moved my mdadm.conf. However the new system reported 1 disk not part of the array (so 5 disk array, including the hot-spare and not containing one of the regular disks) which made me pass an "mdadm --assemble --scan /dev/md0 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf /dev/sdg". After, the array was deemed degraded and started rebuilding.....
It would appear a regular disk (WD EACS), that had previously NOT been giving any problems (not the heat issue or any other) suddenly reports with less sectors and not detected to be part of the array... in the old setup there were absolutely 0 problems with the disk. The disk also reports no reallocated sectors or anything else. No partitioning has been done inbetween.... I am at a loss what could be causing this. A full clean sweep of the disk still yields in lower sectors than all the other disks. Meanwhile the array is back-up now containing the hot spare, running in clean raid 5 mode.
before rebuilding the system (new install) already reported the disk not part of a raid array, when booting back into the old OS the array (and thus that disk) came up like a charm.. I did not check to see wether the disk also reported a lower size in the old system as I did not expect this problem. I can still boot into the old system and check which I will do possibly
Anyone have any clue what just happened with the array and perhaps a way to get the drive back in there (as hot-spare)? Easiest way would of course be to backup all data, simply toss the entire array and rebuild it a new while tinkering with partitioning. However as the array is 4 terabytes big I have no where to store the data inbetween and I do want to keep it. Any help appreciated .
Owyea, I forgot to mention, it';s the only disk fdisk doesn't say has partition table problems (all the other disks report not having one and having invalid flag 0x0000 on partition table 4)