[lagunacomputer]

ok, i made a misstatement about the orphans being the original drives now that i think about it. orphans 3 & 4 are not the original drives. ths is how the set got broke in the first place. also, this is happening on my 4000 which is actually a pre-production beta that was given to me when i worked at quantum. but it has always worked flawlessly, and even takes drives up to 120gb.
Model Software Hardware Server # BIOS
4000 series 4.0.860 (US) 2.2.1 555787 2.4.437


Here's how this all happened to the best of my memory. Just remember that i was very carefull not to ever lose 2 drives at once.

A drive failed, and i put in a new spare and it and the raid rebuilt. PERFECT.

Somewhere durring or shortly after that, another drive failed.
But i was able to do another spare/rebuild/replacement and bring the whole thing back up. worked fine for a week. NO PROBLEM.
except i used an older used drive for the replacement. BAD IDEA.

So 3 and 4 aren't the originals, but since they rebuilt the raid and worked, i consider them to have the same data as the originals. UNLESS.....

...But then one of these replacements started reporting bad sectors, but was still functional in the raid. im poor and had used used drives. BIG MISTAKE. here is where my memory gets fuzzy so bear with me.

This bad replacement drive finally failed enough to break the raid set, leaving me with 3raid/good+1orphan/failure/used. NO PROBLEM, just another damn replacement to do. All the data is still on the 3raid/good,

I opened it up to replace the 1oprhan/failed with a NEW clean drive.
BUT ACCIDENTLY PULLED A GOOD MEMBER from the working 3raid intact set. :<

Leaving me with 2raid/good+1orphan/failed+1spare/new (& 1raid/good in hand, thinking it was the 1orphan/failed). rebooted.....CRAP.

.....but I realized I had pulled the wrong drive and shut it down......but i think it started a rebuild and thats how i got 2 identical IDs
So I put back the1raid/good keeping the 1orphan/failed in the snap.

This where i know that u can re-join an orphan with a broken raid set with the proper command, im 99% that i was able to do this. this gave me back my original 3raid/good+1orphan/failure/used before the incorrect drive pull/mixup.

then I replaced the 1orphan/failed with the 1spare/new like it should have been to finally rebuild a solid good 4 drive raid. Then rebooted.

But it didnt rebuild, probably because of the duplicate id's on the two drives. Now I have 2raid/good+2r/good/orphan, . thats why i have a duplicate ID in there somehow. I mixed em up on accident. Lesson here is, don't drink & 'drive'.

ok the more i think about this i remember this happening to my 4100 about a year ago and i was able to put it all back using config/debug. but i dont remember exactly how i did it. i either broke or unmounted the whole thing and resynced.

well im almost done trying everything and pretty much would have given up but im so damn determined to figure it all out. (Not to mention i need the data bad) I believe in this because Quantum says to call them if you get 2 orphans and that sorta backs up my fuzzy memory that it is possible and im sure i figured it out once before on the 4100. I hope this can help someone out someday.