[Techtalk] software raid conundrum

[kclair]

Hi All,

i have been trying to help someone fix their server who is using linux
software raid.  I've never dealt with raid before.  I've read the
linux software raid how-to, but I still don't have a clear picture of
what I need to do to fix the situation, which is:

the software raid-1 was set up accessing two disk devices directly:
        device          /dev/hdc
        raid-disk       0
        device          /dev/hdb
        raid-disk       1

this started causing problems when the mirror started trying to write
to portions of the disks which should be inaccessible.  so, the plan
was to remove the devices, one at a time, from the array and then to
partition them and then readd them.  however, the devices are slightly
different sizes, and i didn't check which was which before starting,
so i ended up removing, partitioning, and readding the larger of the
two devices first.  after it had been readded and resynced, i removed
the second device.  of course, now i cannot readd that device because
the size of the array has grown to the size of the larger disk!

i'm a bit confused about how to proceed.  do i need to disassemble the
array and sync the disks somehow and then reassemble the array?  or
can i disassemble the array and then reassemble it and the raid
software will sync the disks, based on the data on the larger disk?

any advice is much appreciated.

Kristina