I've no idea what happened, but the box I was working on last week has a *second* bad drive. Actually, I'm starting to wonder about that particulare hot-swap bay. Anyway, mdadm --detail shows /dev/sdb1 remove. I've added /dev/sdi1... but see both /dev/sdh1 and /dev/sdi1 as spare, and have yet to find a reliable way to make either one active. Actually, I would have expected the linux RAID to replace a failed one with a spare.... Clues for the poor? I *really* don't want to freak out the user by taking it down, and building yet another array. mark