I'm running a file server with RH9 using two scsi drives in a RAID1 array as device md0 mounted as /data. I had power problems and the server crashed, went off-line and just sat there with the hd light on, nothing on the monitor, keyboard did not responed. Pulled the plug, then restarted. Boot up proceeded OK except I saw the message during boot "md0 startup......sda1 failed, disabling device. No extra drive found to reconstruct, continuing with sdb1". Boot completed and all services came back and when I ls /data it's all there. I did a "cat /proc/mdstat" and it only showed sdb1.

This is the fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/sda: 36.7 GB, 36703934464 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4462 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4462 35840983+ fd Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sdb: 36.7 GB, 36703934464 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4462 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 4462 35840983+ fd Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4734 38025823+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 4735 4865 1052257+ 82 Linux swap

Does this suggest that sda is still viable?

I have two new 37Gb scsi hd's still in boxes. What's the best way to put this thing back together?

any help is appreciated, thanks!

looks like it shouldn't be a problem. here you would format the drive and recreate relevant partitions as linux raid automatic. then remove the old drive, put the new one in. once you're booted up use mdadm to add the drive as another device. once added you can watch /proc/mdstat and see the mirror come back up online. "mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda1" etc...

by the look of it you're running everything from one partition bar swap? man that's a really bad idea... if something valuable enough to run raid on, it's worth partitioning well too.

Thanks for the reply!

Your suggestion was where I was heading after going through a bunch of online stuff re: mdadm. What a cool utility!

I don't fully understand your coment re: the partitioning. Should the mirrored drives be divide into 2 partitions?

well they should be partitioned according to a formal partitioning scheme... /, /usr, /var, /tmp, /home etc...