ext3 filesystem not working with raid5

From: Mario Thomas (mario_at_alamar.net)
Date: 12/29/03

  • Next message: J.O. Aho: "Re: ext3 filesystem not working with raid5" 
    Date: 29 Dec 2003 10:56:50 -0800

    I have a computer with a RAID5 array running of an adaptec 2400A IDE
    raid controller. There are four disks each of 250Gb and made by
    Maxtor.

    After installing the card and disks and creating an array I then
    proceeded to partition and create an ext3 filesystem.

    The raid5 has run perfectly for 4 weeks. Last week we shut the machine
    down for an office move and upon restarting the computer found that we
    were unable to mount the array partition (/dev/sdb1).

    Following a lot of diagnostic work and over a week of downtime of the
    array we have come to the conclusion that the ext3 filesystem is
    damaged somehow. When we run fsck -t ext3 /dev/sdb1 it runs but then
    exits with an error about a magic number. Also it suffers from lot's
    of I/O errors.

    My question is - how do we restore the ext3 filesystem. We've spoken
    to adaptec who have confirmed that the raid5 is healthy. So it has to
    be a filesystem problem. Just to be sure we've arranged an RMA of the
    card just to swap it out - but my fear is that the ext3 is to blame.

    The disks contain a lot of sensitive business critical information for
    which there is no back up - just lots of work to manually re-create it
    - which would be a complete pain. I think i've learned my lesson about
    backing up - even when you have a RAID5!

    Now all I need are some pointers and instructions on how to ascertain
    exactly what the problem is with the ext3 filesystem and how to go
    about repairing it.

    Thanks in advance - and happy new year

    Mario

  • Next message: J.O. Aho: "Re: ext3 filesystem not working with raid5"

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