I have 4 Seagate 300GB HDDs and a Promise SATAII150 TX4 Controller on a gigabyte motherboard with AMD 1800+. Running Debian Sarge 3.1 with 2.6.12 Kernel

I havebeen struggling with this setup for a few days with no luck.
Here is what I did:

- Compiled new kernel to get support for the TX4
- Partitioned each drive cfdisk as "Linux RAID autodetect"
- Used mdadm to setup a RAID device ("mdadm -C /dev/md0 -v -l 5 -n 4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1" was the exact command)
...it created the device and started the recovery process (i was told I could reboot with no problem at this point and the recovery would continue when it started again . I didn't reboot yet though)
- That all seemed to work just fine, so I used mkfs to create an ext3 filesystem on my RAID-array. ("mkfs -V -t ext3 /dev/md0" was the exact command)
- I added the device to my fstab file and mounted it (I added "/dev/md0 /archives ext3 defaults 0 0") It mounted fine and I could write to it and read from it.

I was excited....BUT

when I restarted my computer I got a "Bad Superblock" error

so i started over and this time let the recovery process continue overnight before I rebooted. It finished and I reboot to the same error...I just don't get it, but I an new to software RAID (maybe this should be in the newbie section)
Thanks for your time.

...please help

I also faced the same problem.
But then I became busy with work, so didnt find much time to do research.

I can suggest a work around.
Dont make rootfs as part of RAID
in fstab configure md0 not to mount on boot

Now it should boot.
Now try mounting your md0. It should mount

I cannot get this to work for the LIFE OF ME!

PLEEEAAAASSSSEEEE someone point me in the direction of a write-up on how to make a RAID 5 work.
I have been trying for a WEEK to get this to work and it just doesn't. My superblocks are always "bad" when i reboot and try to mount the RAID. even when I was able to mount and read/write to it before the reboot. I even let the drives fully sync before attempting to reboot. What is the recommended filesystem? what steps should i take to create the array and fs on the array? the steps I took already are above....

ppppplllleeeaaasssseeee help me!

ps. on thing i changed from above was to not add the array to my fstab and then mount it manually after reboot.....didn;t change anything.

bumpty boo please helpty doo

looks like the data remains if I recreate the array everytime i boot the computer....
thats not very comforting for storing data safely...chances are ill type a 3 instead of a 4 and loose all my data....not cool...

ANY ideas? I bet its something incredibly stupid and noobish that I'm just forgetting to do...help me?