URGENT: Need help rebuilding iir RAID5 array with failed drive

[Sean Cavanaugh]

Most GOOD RAID cards will let you rebuild an array from the card BIOS outside the OS.
Some will even do it automatically, if you replace the failed drive, while the system is fully up and running (of course it slaughters your drive access speed while it rebuilds the data on the new drive)
If your RAID card can only interact with the drives from within an OS, I would highly suggest getting a better RAID card to save you trouble in the future.
 
the fact that you have the array as RAID 5 shows that you haven't lost any data and should not get any data errors as far as the OS can see.
-Sean Cavanaugh
 



> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 06:49:19 -0700> From: yanefbsd at gmail.com> To: current at freebsd.org; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org> CC: > Subject: URGENT: Need help rebuilding iir RAID5 array with failed drive> > Hello,> First off sorry for the cross-post. I typically don't do this> but this is an important question, so please bear with me. I'm just> trying to get more eyes on the subject so I can (maybe) get a reply> quicker...> I'm running 8-CURRENT on my machine and it appears that one of> the disks in my RAID5 array has taken a nose dive (BIOS recognizes> that it exists, but Intel Matrix Manager claims that the disk is an> "Offline Member"). After doing some reading it appears that it's> kaput, so I need to get a replacement disk to fix this one...> That aside, I need to determine how to rebuild the array in a> Unix environment because Intel only provides instructions for how to> use their Windows matrix manager. If anyone can point me to some links> or provide me with some pointers on how to correct this issue, I'd owe> you a lot; in fact the next time you come by Santa Cruz, CA I'll> gladly treat you to some beers or something else you might want :)...> Linux solutions (if there isn't a proper one for FreeBSD) are valid,> as long as the core data remains uncorrupted and I can do what I need> to from a LiveCD. I'm just scared to boot up OS and have it do some> irrevocable operation like fsck -y and assume parity errors are ok or> something along those lines (I don't remember if I set rc.conf to> fsck -y and I know I can change that from single-user mode, but I want> to play things conservatively if at all possible) :\...> Filesystem is UFS2 with softupdates of course.> Point proven that I need to backup my data more often :(...> TIA,> -Garrett> > PS If replying on the questions@ list, please CC me as I'm not> subscribed to that list.> _______________________________________________> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"