Sorry for a slow response but life intervened!

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 5:07 PM, Digimer <lists@alteeve.ca> wrote:
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On 17/02/15 06:04 PM, o1bigtenor wrote:
> Now I used gdisk to set things up so likely that is where I will
> need to start - - - hmmmmmmmmmmm.
>
> Has anyone done anything like this in the somewhat recent past?
>
> (Wondering if when disk is partitioned that mdadm will happily
> absorb that disk into the array. Likely will need another reboot
> too!)
>
> Dee

I use parted or fdisk, I am not familiar with other tools. In the end,
what matters is that the partition(s) on the new drive match (equal
size or larger) the existing partitions.

The drive has not yet been partitioned. The disks (in the array) were
partitioned to be just one large partition (whole disk).

You will then have to tell mdadm to use the new partitions. It will
not "just use them".

As Lennart asked; Show us the output of 'cat /proc/mdstat'.

# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid10]
md0 : active raid10 sdc1[0] sda1[3] sde1[1]
      1953518592 blocks super 1.2 512K chunks 2 near-copies [4/3] [UU_U]
     
unused devices: <none>

 
Also,
please share the output of:

parted /dev/sda print free

# parted /dev/sda print free
Model: ATA ST31000524AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
        32.3kB  1049kB  1016kB           Free Space
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  primary               raid
        1000GB  1000GB  745kB            Free Space

 
parted /dev/sdb print free

sdb is my system drive and is not part of the array
 
parted /dev/sdc print free

# parted /dev/sdc print free
Model: ATA ST31000524AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
        32.3kB  1049kB  1016kB           Free Space
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  primary               raid
        1000GB  1000GB  745kB            Free Space

 
parted /dev/sdd print free

sdd is my RAM drive

sde

# parted /dev/sde print free
Model: ATA ST31000524AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sde: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
        32.3kB  1049kB  1016kB           Free Space
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  primary               raid
        1000GB  1000GB  745kB            Free Space

sdf

# parted /dev/sdf print free
Error: /dev/sdf: unrecognised disk label
 


When the system was setup I had the array as disks sda, sdb, sdc and sdd with sde being my system disk and sdf being the RAM drive.
In the process of installing the new hard drive I did not label the wires from the existing setup when I was removing the wires. (I know better just didn't think first!)
The new number schema doesn't seem to be causing any difficulties. Should I be trying to change things back to the sda - d raid and e/f being for the system drive and RAM drive?

Thanking you for your sharing and insights!!

Dee