RE: Correct way to create multiple RAID volumes with hot-spare?

["Ruth Ivimey-Cook" <Ruth.Ivimey-Cook@ivimey.org>]

Steve, 

> The recent "Messed up creating new array..." thread has 
> someone who started by using the whole drives but she now 
> wants to use partitions because the array is not starting 
> automatically on boot (I think that was the symptom).  I'm 
> guessing this is because there is no partigion ID of "fd" 
> since there isn't even a partition.

Yes, that's right.

> I'm on the verge of re-doing this array with 11 full drives 
> (/dev/sd? as opposed to /dev/sd?1 and /dev/sd?2).  Will I 
> have the same problems with booting?  I like the idea of not 
> having to partition the drives but not if it is going to 
> cause hassles.  I realize that there could be a potential 
> problem if I need to replace a drive with a slightly 
> different model that is slightly smaller.

That's the reason I ended up re-creating the array from backup, using
partitions.

You _can_ use raw disks, but it's not as easy. I worked out that I was
originally having problems because my mdadm.conf file had the right drives
(/dev/sdc ...) in the ARRAY line, but didn't have the same drives listed in the
DEVICES line.

I would suggest you do use partitions.

Ruth