Re: [gentoo-user] [HELP] Intermittent software RAID failures

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 4:45 PM, Carlos Hendson <skyclan@gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I've got a Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with dual 2.5" hard drives setup
> using software RAID1.  I've had this computer for about a year and half
> and all's been working well.
>
> I've experienced intermittent software RAID errors like those found in
> the "softraid-fail.txt" attachment.
>
> Initially I suspected a kernel bug because it started around the same
> time I'd upgraded the kernel (around the 2.6.30 upgrade) but subsequent
> kernel upgrades haven't improved the situation.
>
> I've run smartctl --all and bablocks on both disks, but nothing is
> reported as faulty.
>
> I don't understand what is causing RAID to report these faults and would
> like some ideas as to how I can further diagnose the problem.

I remember reading something recently (within the last year?) about
smartmontools causing disks to go offline unnecessarily in some
situation, i think due to a bug in the smart tools. I don't know if
it's a certain version of smartmontools or combination of that and
other things. Maybe you can try upgrade/downgrade of smart or
temporarily disable smartd to see if it stops the disks from being
taken offline.