On 18/09/2009 12:35, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
[...]

If you run a check on a degraded array and the check runs into errors it
can't recover from, I assume that the disk will get kicked off and
you'll have a nonfunctional array instead.

No, I don't think so - at least with RAID-1, md doesn't drop the array 
on errors on the one remaining functional disc, on the grounds that some 
data is better than none, but I don't know whether the array gets 
switched to read-only or what the situation is with other RAID levels.

Cheers,

John.