[mythtv-users] OT: follies with RAID

[Clay]

> From: Nick F <nikos.f at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] OT: follies with RAID
>...
> >> Your memory is very good.... Worked like a charm. 
> I'm always skittish
> > about messing with raid; I don't do it enough to
> have a lot of confidence in
> > my own knowledge.
> >
> I made the same mistake when setting up my RAID5 - ended up
> with one drive
> directly there, instead of as a partition.  Using similar
> mdadm commands I
> fixed it - but noticed that there is still some RAID
> superblock on the
> equivalent of my sdd.  So - when I reinstalled everything
> from scratch on my
> server (as part of upgrading to Fedora 10), there was an
> error in my
> mdadm.conf - and the array was picking up the block from
> sdd, rather than
> sdd1 - and failing on assembly.  Took me ages to figure out
> what was wrong -
> but fixing it in mdadm.conf worked.  I never did figure out
> how to scratch
> all residues of the RAID array that was on sdd.
> 
> I am amazed at how good a piece of work mdadm is, and how
> it can survive
> even an idiot like me hacking away trying to fix things,
> without losing any
> data.

Amazing, isn't it.
I retired the RAID drives on my GA-8IHXP and put them in a drawer. 
Grabbed one months later and attached it via an external USB. mdadm went looking for it's mate to try and rebuild the array...