chrpers,
I did struggle a bit myself for a couple of days too !! Basically, I had the same symptoms as you. Finally, here is what I did :
Rebuilt from scratch only 1 HDD using more or less christoff howto :
1. MBRs Restauration
dd if=sda_mbr of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1
2. Partition table Restauration
edit sda_ptable to comment out line of sda4, so it will only create the first 3 partitions
sfdisk /dev/sda < sda_ptable
3. Manually create sda4 partition
Go down to select free space
Select "New"
Use all space
Select "Type" -> fd (Linux Raid autodetect)
Select "Write" and quit
4. SDA1 Restauration
bzip2 -cd sda1_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sda1
5. SDA2 Restauration
bzip2 -cd sda2_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sda2
6. SDA3 Restauration
bzip2 -cd sda3_image.bz2 | dd of=/dev/sda3
7. Create RAID1 devices (if you want RAID0, you can change later on using the web interface)
modprobe raid1
mknod /dev/md1 b 9 1
mknod /dev/md2 b 9 2
mknod /dev/md3 b 9 3
mknod /dev/md4 b 9 4
mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 missing
mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda2 missing
mdadm --create /dev/md3 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda3 missing
mdadm --create /dev/md4 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda4 missing
8. SDA4 Restauration
mkfs.ext3 /dev/md4
mkdir /media/sda4
mount /dev/md4 /media/sda4
cp SDA4FILE.TAR.gz /media/sda4
cd /media/sda4
tar -xzvf SDA4FILE.TAR.gz
rm -R SDA4FILE.TAR.gz
cd /
umount /dev/md4
9. Remove mdadm.conf (a script will rebuild it at bootup)
mkdir /media/sda1
mount /dev/md1 /media/sda1
rm /media/sda1/etc/mdadm.conf
umount /dev/md1
10. Stop RAID
11. poweroff computer
12. Install the HDD in slot A of your book and powerup. Blue rings should come up after ~1-2 min. Got to the web inteface. It should say that drive B is failing. Install brand new drive in slot B and reboot the book. After a few min, it should say "synchronising". I am currently at this stage…
Hope this helps.
Neo.
