On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 7:57 PM, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

I connected the new hard disk, partitioned /dev/sdb1 to match size and
partition id (fd),

Out of interest - why do you use partitions if you use whole drives for the RAID?

The system has a total of 5 disk devices.

1. /dev/sda is a 4GB CF card with a minimal Debian Squeeze (amd64).

The other four are in the order (SATA ports 0,1,2,3)

2. 250GB is /dev/sdb
3. 160GB is /dev/sdc
4. 160GB is /dev/sdd
5. 160GB is /dev/sde

/dev/sdb1 (part id=fd) is slightly larger than /dev/sd[cde]1,
remainder of the disk /dev/sdb is used for /tmp, /var, /var/tmp/, /opt
etc.

Partitions v/s Entire disk --
The wiki link <https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Partition_Types>
suggests both are OK

My understanding is that partid must be = fd for autodetect.   To play
it safe, I have created partitions with part_id=fd.

-- Arun Khan