From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: EJ Vincent Subject: Functioning of --backup-file prior to array growth. Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:09:18 -0500 Message-ID: <512C356E.6070803@ejane.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids Greetings, I didn't want to hijack Kevin's "Damage when growing RAID 5 array" thread, but this got me thinking about my past experiences. I'm preparing to add a disk to an existing RAID6. In the past (more than one occasion) I've specified: "--backup-file=/disk/not/part/of/array/md.bak" and then, after starting the growth, I've gone to this path, and seen nothing created. Is this a file that is created *only* in the event of an error / failure? Should some data be written to this .bak file immediately? If not, what could be preventing this file from being created? Thanks for your input. -EJ