On Thursday 10 January 2013 11:01:01 am Daniel Browning wrote:

Hello, folks. What should I do about the following error?

	mdadm: ignoring /dev/sdd1 as it reports /dev/sdb1 as failed

I was never able to find a way around that error, so I had completely 
written off the failed array. But today I rebooted the server (for a 
completely unrelated reason) and when it came back up, the failed array 
started working just fine, automatically. No error like the above. The array 
passed fsck with a clean bill of health, but now I'm checking for silent 
corruption by comparing against backups (except files that have a newer mod 
time).

I would still be interested in knowing what I *should* have done when 
encountering that error, and if there was any other solution aside from 
rebooting. If not, I have to say I'm disappointed that a reboot is required 
to fix this type of issue, because I thought that was a Windows thing, not 
something to expect from Linux and/or mdadm.

One cooincidence that struck me as very funny was that this morning I read 
the following comic:

http://thedoghousediaries.com/4822

But I still didn't think that rebooting would help my raid issue, so I 
didn't bother to reboot. Later on when I rebooted for a different reason, I 
realized just how timely that comic was.

Special thanks to one "frostschutz" in the freenode #linux-raid IRC channel, 
who helped me out with all this.

--
Daniel Browning
Kavod Technologies