From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Carlos Williams Subject: Re: Building RAID5 w/o a Hot Spare Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:49:04 -0500 Message-ID: References: <1264603005.1928.3.camel@test.apertos.eu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: linux-raid@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids 2010/1/27 Micha=C5=82 Sawicz : > I'm not sure I understand what you want to achieve. A 'spare' disk is > one that isn't used until any of the other fail, then the spare repla= ces > the failed one. The term 'hot spare' is used to identify a disk that = is > a mirror of one of the other drives, but there's no support for that = in > Linux Software-RAID. I am sorry because I think I was using the wrong terminology then. I want to use all 4 disks to be an active member or the RAID5 /dev/md0. I wanted to make sure the command I posted in my original post was not going to use 3 partitions for active members of RAID5 on /dev/md0 and use the 4th drive as a 'spare device' in case one of the three drives fail. I don't want that. I just want 4 active / working devices for /dev/md0. >> mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=3D5 --raid-devices=3D4 /dev/sda2 /de= v/sdb2 >> /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2 > > This will create a RAID5 array of 4 devices, yes. Capacity will be 3 = x > sd?2. Failure of any one of those disks will not harm the data. OK. I think that answers my questions. Thanks for your help! -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" i= n the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html