Hi Phil,

On Fri, 2014-11-14 at 09:52 -0500, Phil Turmel wrote:

Hi Tony,

{Convention on kernel.org is to trim posts & bottom or interleave posts}

Thanks a lot for the advice.

Indeed.

At this point, I would use --create --assume-clean, along with
"missing".  You have a recent enough mdadm to specify
--data-offset=2048, which you definitely need.  Something like:

mdadm --create /dev/mdX --assume-clean --data-offset=2048 \
	--level=5 --raid-devices=4 --chunk=512 \
	missing /dev/sd{f,i,h}

You should verify the Device Role numbers with mdadm -E again, as your
drive letters have changed from the initial report.  To be absolutely
sure, I suggest you record drive serial numbers for each role #.  Also
note the use of braces instead of square brackets--bash re-orders the
latter, and that would break your array.  For this type of recovery, it
is vital that the devices be listed precisely in device role order,
starting with zero.

After creation, verify that the space before and space after stats for
each device match the original report, before fsck or mount.
(--data-offset controls space before, that plus --size controls space
after.)

That is my plan to closely look at devices role to ensure proper order
in array creation. To avoid any mistake, i was planning to
use /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc syntax instead of /dev/sd{a,b,c}, it's
probably the same, is it not?

Like said in my original post, i am making duplicate copies of each
disk, just to be extra safe. I already did it for two disks i have on
hands. I have ordered and waiting for two other drives to come in. As
soon as the copies will be done for the two other disks, i will try that
procedure. I will use the --data-offset parameter as you suggest.


Thank you so much for your help!

Tony