Questions about software RAID
 

The following questions seems unanswered in the HOWTO. Or at least: I still don't get it after having read it.

1) I have a RAID-1 setup with one spare disk. A disk crashes and the spare disk takes over. Now, when the crashed disk is replaced with a new one, what is then happening with the role of the spare disk? Is it reverting to its old role as spare disk?

If it is NOT reverting to it's old role, then the raidtab file will suddenly be out-of-sync with reality. Is that correct?

Does the answer given here differ in e.g. RAID-5 setups?


2) The new disk has to be manually partitioned before beeing used in the array. What happens if the new partitions are larger than other partitions used in the array? What happens if they are smaller?


3) Must all partition types be 0xFD? What happens if they are not?


4) I guess the partitions itself doesn't have to be formated as the filesystem is on the RAID-level. Is that correct?


5) Removing a disk requires that I do a "mdadm -r" on all the partitions that is involved in a RAID array. I attempt to by a hot-swap capable controler, so what happens if I just pull out the disk without this manual removal command?
Aren't there some more hotswap-friendly setup?


6) I know that the kernel does stripping automatically if more partitions are given as swap partitions in /etc/fstab. But can it also handle if one disk crashes? I.e. do I have to let my swap disk be a RAID-setup too if I wan't it to continue upon disk crash?