[Discuss] Raid 5 Disk Won't Rebuild

[omegahalo at gmail.com (Chris O'Connell)]

Greetings Everyone,

I have a 6 disk Raid 5 on a Proliant ML350 G3 running Ubuntu 10.04 32-bit
and one of the disks failed.  No matter what I do I can't get the
replacement disk to rebuild.  It comes online, rebuilds for 20 minutes then
shuts off.  I've tried downloading the HP Array utilities for Linux and
running, but they don't help me much.  The firmware for the drive
controller and BIOS has been updated to the latest version.  I've tried
four replacement drives, all of them I know are good.

I suspect if I delete and rebuild the array all of the disks will come
online and the array will function correctly.  I know, certainly my
proposed solution is similar to using a hammer to push in a thumb tack.
 This time when I configure the array I'll configure a SPARE drive, which
will reduce the overall usable space available in the new configuration.

Right now I just do a file level backup to tape.  This is an OK solution,
but will require a significant amount of time to rebuild the OS and restore
the files.

What's the best utility to back up the whole disk, allowing me to restore
to a drive (or array) of a different size?  I had considered DD, but I
don't think I can restore the image if the disk sizes don't match, am I
wrong?

Any help would save me a lot of time,

Great thanks!
-- 
Chris O'Connell
http://outlookoutbox.blogspot.com