[arch-general] dmraid disk failure - howto rebuild new disk - gparted hates Me :-(

[David C. Rankin]

Listmates,

	My Seagate drives are dropping like flies with less than 1400 hours of run
time. (that's less than 58 days of service!) Latest is a 750G (ST3750330AS)
that was part of the second raid set on one of my boxes running Arch. Seagate
sent a new one and now I am trying to figure out how to rebuild the array. The
fakeraid setup is with a nvidia bios raid chip using software dmraid. The array
is composed of /dev/sdb and /dev/sdd which are both part of
/dev/mapper/nvidia_fffadgic:

[00:59 ecstasy:/home/david] # dmraid -r
/dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_fffadgic", mirror, ok, 1465149166 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_fdaacfde", mirror, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_fffadgic", mirror, ok, 1465149166 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_fdaacfde", mirror, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0

	/dev/sdd failed and has been replaced. The partition information on /dev/sdb is:

[00:43 ecstasy:/home/david] # fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 750.1 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1        7553    60669441    5  Extended
/dev/sdb5   *           1        2432    19534977   83  Linux
/dev/sdb6            2433        2447      120456   83  Linux
/dev/sdb7            2448        7310    39062016   83  Linux
/dev/sdb8            7311        7553     1951866   82  Linux swap / Solaris

	/dev/sdd is blank. My first thought was simply to use fdisk to create the
extended partition /dev/sdd1 and then use the gparted-live CD to copy sdb[5 6 7
8] over to sdd and be done. The setup in gparted went fine, but when gparted
went to format the partitions as ext3, it gave an error and would not go any
farther. The error was simply a generic "operation could not be completed..."
with nothing to say why. I don't know, but maybe it has something to do with
both drives being combined under the device mapper heading of nvidia_fffadgic
that caused it to puke.

	That's pretty much where I am now. My next thought is to just use dd to copy
the partitions over. I have opensuse on the sda/sdc array (mapper
nvidia_fdaacfde), so the drives I am working with are not mounted anywhere and
should be easy to work with.

	What says the brain trust? Can you think of any way I was screwing up gparted
so it wouldn't even format the copy partitions? What about the dd method? Any
hints or gotchas? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com