On 02/05/2011 00:06, Jameson Graef Rollins wrote:

On Fri, 29 Apr 2011 05:39:40 +0100, Ben Hutchings[off-list ref]  wrote:

quoted

On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 09:19 -0700, Jameson Graef Rollins wrote:

quoted

I run what I imagine is a fairly unusual disk setup on my laptop,
consisting of:

   ssd ->  raid1 ->  dm-crypt ->  lvm ->  ext4

I use the raid1 as a backup.  The raid1 operates normally in degraded
mode.  For backups I then hot-add a usb hdd, let the raid1 sync, and
then fail/remove the external hdd.

This is not directly related to your issues here, but it is possible to 
make a 1-disk raid1 set so that you are not normally degraded.  When you 
want to do the backup, you can grow the raid1 set with the usb disk, 
want for the resync, then fail it and remove it, then "grow" the raid1 
back to 1 disk.  That way you don't feel you are always living in a 
degraded state.