On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 11:27:53AM +1100, Kahlil Hodgson wrote:
Now I start to get I/O errors on printed on the console. Run 'mdadm -D /dev/md1' and see the array is degraded and /dev/sdb2 has been marked as faulty.
what I/O errors?
So I start again and repeat the install process very carefully. This time I check the raid array straight after boot.
mdadm -D /dev/md0 - all is fine. mdadm -D /dev/md1 - the two drives are resyncing.Okay, that is odd. The RAID1 array was created at the start of the install process, before any software was installed. Surely it should be in sync already? Googled a bit and found a post were someone else had seen same thing happen. The advice was to just wait until the drives sync so the 'blocks match exactly' but I'm not really happy with the explanation. At this rate its going to take a whole day to do a single minimal install and I'm sure I would have heard others complaining about the process.
Yeah, it's normal for a raid1 to 'sync' when you first create it. the odd part is the I/O errors.
Any ideas what is going on here? If its bad drives, I really need some confirmation independent of the software raid failing. I thought SMART or badblocks give me that. Perhaps it has nothing to do with the drives. Could a problem with the mainboard or the memory cause this issue? Is it a SATA3 issue? Should I try it on the 3Gb/s channels since there's probably little speed difference with non-SSDs?
look up the drive errors.
Oh, and my experience? both wd and seagate won't complain if you error on the side of 'when in doubt, return the drive' - that's what I do.
But yeah, usually smart will report something... at least a high reallocated sectors or something.