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.