RAID MDADM Integrity Verification

[DMacMan]

I have 3 Linux Software RAID 8 Drive Level 5 systems in use and everything seems to be working quite well with them. Even though I know my data is protected with the redundance of sacraficing any one drive, I still would like some Preemptive tools or reporting when a drive is going to fail. I already have SMARTd set up and running and thats fine.

What I'm looking for is a feature that will verify the data integrity of the RAID and/or drives. Is there any Linux tool that can accomplish this? I checked out all the mdadm commands and I didn't see anything that matched what I want to do. I know 3Ware and HighPoint RAID cards have a 'Verify RAID Integrity' feature and want to know if there is a command just like that for SoftWare RAIDs.

Also, how does one force a SoftWare RAID resync?


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you!

[pert]

You seem to be going down the right lines with SMART monitoring. In my experience this is the best way to stay ahead on drive failures.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "verify the data integrity of the RAID and/or drives". SMART will be looking for signs that the drive might be on the way out so I guess that covers the integrity of the drives. As far as the integrity of the data goes the only way an error can be introduced is when a disk write error occurs and the kernel's RAID software is very good at spotting these. When write errors (and possibly when read errors) occur the array will show up as being in 'degraded' mode and the faulty disk will be dropped from the array.

The only thing that I can see a 'Verify RAID Integrity' feature doing is verifying the parity information that provides the redundancy in RAID 5 and I'm afraid I've not heard of anything which can do that for Linux's software RAID.