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Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop.

5 x 2TB disks in RAID 6 array.

lsblk

sda      8:0    0   2.7T  0 disk
├─sda1   8:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/efi
└─sda2   8:2    0   2.7T  0 part /
sdb      8:16   0   1.8T  0 disk
└─sdb1   8:17   0   1.8T  0 part
sdc      8:32   0   1.8T  0 disk
└─sdc1   8:33   0   1.8T  0 part
sdd      8:48   0   1.8T  0 disk
└─sdd1   8:49   0   1.8T  0 part
sde      8:64   0   1.8T  0 disk
└─sde1   8:65   0   1.8T  0 part
sdf      8:80   0   1.8T  0 disk
└─sdf1   8:81   0   1.8T  0 part

mdadm.conf

ARRAY /dev/md0 metadata=1.2 name=bigdesk:0 UUID=e39b649e:039057a6:ac7fb6ea:d18895a3

I've apparently destroyed the RAID array by running fsck on HDD partitions.

Wouldn't mount or even assemble, reporting bad superblock. I thought fsck would recover this from HDDs but actually just damaged them. Totally desperate to get this recovered, because it WAS my backup.

Can anything be done?

Update May 18 - Thanks for everyone's responses.

  • What did I fscK?
# fsck /dev/sdb1
# fsck /dev/sdc1
# fsck /dev/sdd1
# fsck /dev/sde1
# fsck /dev/sdf1

Answered yes to questions in fsck.

  • Yes this is my backup, but it's backup of a wide variety of stuff, and the only place where everything was all in one place, so trying to recover it possible.
Chris Davies
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FJZappa
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1 Answers1

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RAID6 is totally unlike RAID1. The data is striped across multiple disks, so no one disk will contain a complete set of data.

In general, if you've touched the data inside the RAID partitions you've destroyed its integrity. For RAID1 the data might have been recoverable from one of the mirrors (you'd flatten the array, rebuild with one half missing, copy back the data from the surviving half and then add back to the array). In the case for RAID6 you've done even worse as fsck will have tried to fix what it thinks is filesystem but isn't.

Even if the RAID were to reassemble you could have no faith in the data.

Flatten the entire array (and its data) and restart your backups. At least it wasn't your live system.

Chris Davies
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