Subject: ANNOUNCE: mdadm 2.4-pre1 - development release for testing only I am somewhat cautious in announcing the availability of mdadm version 2.4-pre1 It is available at the usual places: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/source/mdadm/ and http://www.{countrycode}.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/ pre-release 2.4-pre1 contains support for growing a raid5 array i.e. adding extra drives and restriping the whole arrays. This requires a kernel more recent than 2.6.16-rc6-mm2. During a restripe, there is a crtical section at the start where a system crash can leave the contents of the raid5 unrecoverable. This version of mdadm will backup that section, and can restore it when reassembling the array after a crash. Have fun, but use it carefully and report any problems. NeilBrown 20th March 2006