Hi!

Today one of two harddisks on server fails. How-to repair raid? Easy.

Check raid status (find hda is not updated)

cat /proc/mdstat

If damaged disk is active (for example: only bad sectors) remove it from raid.

mdadm /dev/md0 -r /dev/hda

Turn off your server if hd is not hot-swappable.
Remove damaged hd and replace it with new hd.
Restart your server, be sure that is starts from the old ok hd (ex. hdb). Sometimes bios doesn’t properly updates boot devices and tries to start from new hd or cds, fix it.

System must boot-up properly from old ok hd.

Clean new hd (ex. /dev/hda), remove all partitions.

fdisk /dev/hda

Clean MBR of new disk (to be sure that an old mbr doesn’t exist)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Copy raid partitions scheme from old ok hd.

sfdisk -d /dev/hdb > mbr_hdb.txt

Apply that scheme to your new hd.

sfdisk /dev/hda < /root/mbr_hdb.txt

Add partitions from new disk to your raid

mdadm /dev/md0 -a /dev/hda1

Raid recovery starts.
Check rebuild status

mdadm –detail /dev/md0


/dev/md0:
Version : 00.90
Creation Time : Wed Apr  1 11:10:50 2009
Raid Level : raid1
Array Size : 37110016 (35.39 GiB 38.00 GB)
Used Dev Size : 37110016 (35.39 GiB 38.00 GB)
Raid Devices : 2
Total Devices : 2
Preferred Minor : 0
Persistence : Superblock is persistent

Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
2       3        1        0      spare rebuilding   /dev/hda1
1       3       65        1      active sync   /dev/hdb1


That’s it!
Wait and be happy.

oh…. as you know this is not a complete/best/lucky tutorial, if you follow it you home may explode, your city my be destroyed, but don’t bother me! 🙂 no warranty

Good luck!! 😀