All, thanks in advance...particularly Neil.

My raid5 setup has 4 partitions, 2 of which are showing up as spare and 2 as active. The mdadm --assemble --force gives me the following error:
2 active devices and 2 spare cannot start device

it is a raid 5, with superblock 1.2, 4 devices in the order sda1, sdb5, sdc5, sdd5. I have lvm2 on top of this with other devices ...so as you all know data is irreplaceable blah blah.

I know that this device has not been written to for a while, so the data can be considered intact (hopefully all) if I can get the device to start up...but I'm not sure of the best way to coax the kernel to assemble it. Relevant information follows:

=== This device is working fine === 
mdadm --examine  -e1.2 /dev/sdb5
/dev/sdb5:
          Magic : a92b4efc
        Version : 1.2
    Feature Map : 0x1
     Array UUID : 42c56ea0:2484f566:387adc6c:b3f6a014
           Name : GATEWAY:127  (local to host GATEWAY)
  Creation Time : Sat Aug 22 09:44:21 2009
     Raid Level : raid5
   Raid Devices : 4

 Avail Dev Size : 586099060 (279.47 GiB 300.08 GB)
     Array Size : 1758296832 (838.42 GiB 900.25 GB)
  Used Dev Size : 586098944 (279.47 GiB 300.08 GB)
    Data Offset : 272 sectors
   Super Offset : 8 sectors
          State : clean
    Device UUID : f8ebb9f8:b447f894:d8b0b59f:ca8e98eb

Internal Bitmap : 2 sectors from superblock
    Update Time : Fri Mar 19 00:56:15 2010
       Checksum : 1005cfbc - correct
         Events : 3796145

         Layout : left-symmetric
     Chunk Size : 64K

   Device Role : Active device 2
   Array State : .AA. ('A' == active, '.' == missing)

=== This device is marked spare, can be marked active (IMHO) ===
mdadm --examine  -e1.2 /dev/sdd5
/dev/sdd5:
          Magic : a92b4efc
        Version : 1.2
    Feature Map : 0x1
     Array UUID : 42c56ea0:2484f566:387adc6c:b3f6a014
           Name : GATEWAY:127  (local to host GATEWAY)
  Creation Time : Sat Aug 22 09:44:21 2009
     Raid Level : raid5
   Raid Devices : 4

 Avail Dev Size : 586099060 (279.47 GiB 300.08 GB)
     Array Size : 1758296832 (838.42 GiB 900.25 GB)
  Used Dev Size : 586098944 (279.47 GiB 300.08 GB)
    Data Offset : 272 sectors
   Super Offset : 8 sectors
          State : clean
    Device UUID : 763a832f:1a9a7ea8:ce90d4a3:32e8ae54

Internal Bitmap : 2 sectors from superblock
    Update Time : Fri Mar 19 00:56:15 2010
       Checksum : c78aab46 - correct
         Events : 3796145

         Layout : left-symmetric
     Chunk Size : 64K

   Device Role : spare
   Array State : .AA. ('A' == active, '.' == missing)


=== This is the completely failed device (needs replacement)	=== 
mdadm --examine  -e1.2 /dev/sda1
[HANGS!!]



I already have the replacement drive available as sde5 but want to be able to reconstruct as much as possible)

Thanks again,
Anshuman Aggarwal--
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