[sclug] RAID 5

[Peter Brewer]

We're currently setting up a fileserver using RAID 5.  It consists of 8x 
250Gb HD's each partioned something like this:

512Mb
5Gb
40Gb
185Gb

Which gives us final reported partitions:

4Gb = Swap
33Gb = /
280Gb = /home
1.3Tb = /data

We are running Debian and when we set up the RAID we set all 8 disks to 
active and none to inactive (not entirely sure whether we needed an 
inactive disk or not).  All seems to be working fine except when we 
simulated a disk failure by booting up with just 7 disks.  Debian 
detects the missing disk and continues to boot happily.  After I log in, 
both root and /home seem to be intact however /data is empty.  Why would 
it successfully recover just 2 of the 3 RAID partitions when they've all 
been set up in the same way?

Any insights would be appreciated.

Cheers

Pete