recovering from a disk failure via raid

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

One of two drives I have in a raid1 configuration is showing a read
error.  The kernel properly detected this and failed the drive.  The
question, of course, is now what?

The first choice, of course, is to install a replacement drive.  How do
I initiate the recopy?  'raidctl -R'?  (Is it worth just doing that
without replacing the drive, on the grounds that rewriting a bad sector
will sometimes cause the drive to switch to a spare?)

But perhaps it doesn't pay to replace the drive -- it's pretty full,
and besides, 60GB drives aren't easy to find these days...  If I were
to buy two new drives, what is the best way to set up a RAID1 on the
new pair?  Install one new drive as the sole member of a RAID1 set,
install everything on it, then replace the old 60GB drive with the
second and initiate reconstruction?


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb