Hi all! I'm new to this list. I wanted to have an opinion of the situation i'm facing now (i'm no expert in LVM). Last week, i had to re-install a system which had a system hard drive crash (it was clunking before it definitely died!). It was running on SuSE 9.0 before. I just finished to install a fresh copy of CentOS 4.4 on a new hard disk. I want to know if it's possible to "import" the old LVM array into the fresh CentOS install. We have 1 volume group (LVM1) that contains 3 whole hard drives. I had the time to save some informations before the system hard drive crashed definitely: I have vgcfgrestore info, i have volgroups_001.conf, i have the full /etc directory and pvdata. Here is a part of the info i have: PVDATA: ======--- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sda VG Name volgroup_001 PV Size 298.09 GB [625142448 secs] / NOT usable 32.19 MB [LVM: 165 KB] PV# 1 PV Status available Allocatable yes (but full) Cur LV 1 PE Size (KByte) 32768 Total PE 9537 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 9537 PV UUID 5nc71v-D2mv-RpBX-3c3f-17tI-9ChT-mYctTg --- Volume group --- VG Name VG Access read/write VG Status NOT available/resizable VG # 0 MAX LV 256 Cur LV 1 Open LV 0 MAX LV Size 2 TB Max PV 256 Cur PV 3 Act PV 3 VG Size 670.53 GB PE Size 32 MB Total PE 21457 Alloc PE / Size 21457 / 670.53 GB Free PE / Size 0 / 0 VG UUID hf074V-P9DA-AmCU-F2pr-nfdD-QTaA-Ic0lH5 --- List of logical volumes --- pvdata -- logical volume "/dev/volgroup_001/loggroup_001" at offset 0 pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 1 is empty pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 2 is empty .... pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 254 is empty pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 255 is empty --- List of physical extents --- PE: 00000 LV: 001 LE: 00000 PE: 00001 LV: 001 LE: 00001 .... PE: 09535 LV: 001 LE: 09535 PE: 09536 LV: 001 LE: 09536 --- List of physical volume UUIDs --- 001: 5nc71v-D2mv-RpBX-3c3f-17tI-9ChT-mYctTg 002: 8bsBQR-bTiI-Zky5-Qvpu-oMtp-x62p-0uWwha 003: 6xAILO-KhgO-0U0c-Ir88-xZ8y-AIlc-JtPjDg --- NEW Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/hdc VG Name volgroup_001 PV Size 30.21 MB [61872 secs] PV# 2 PV Status NOT available Allocatable NO Cur LV 0 PE Size (KByte) 0 Total PE 0 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 0 PV UUID 8bsBQR-bTiI-Zky5-Qvpu-oMtp-x62p-0uWwha --- Volume group --- VG Name VG Access read/write VG Status NOT available/resizable VG # 0 MAX LV 256 Cur LV 1 Open LV 0 MAX LV Size 2 TB Max PV 256 Cur PV 3 Act PV 3 VG Size 670.53 GB PE Size 32 MB Total PE 21457 Alloc PE / Size 21457 / 670.53 GB Free PE / Size 0 / 0 VG UUID hf074V-P9DA-AmCU-F2pr-nfdD-QTaA-Ic0lH5 --- List of logical volumes --- pvdata -- logical volume "/dev/volgroup_001/loggroup_001" at offset 0 pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 1 is empty .... pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 254 is empty pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 255 is empty --- List of physical extents --- --- List of physical volume UUIDs --- 001: 5nc71v-D2mv-RpBX-3c3f-17tI-9ChT-mYctTg 002: 8bsBQR-bTiI-Zky5-Qvpu-oMtp-x62p-0uWwha 003: 6xAILO-KhgO-0U0c-Ir88-xZ8y-AIlc-JtPjDg --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/hdd VG Name volgroup_001 PV Size 186.31 GB [390721968 secs] / NOT usable 32.19 MB [LVM: 151 KB] PV# 3 PV Status NOT available Allocatable yes (but full) Cur LV 1 PE Size (KByte) 32768 Total PE 5960 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 5960 PV UUID 6xAILO-KhgO-0U0c-Ir88-xZ8y-AIlc-JtPjDg --- Volume group --- VG Name VG Access read/write VG Status NOT available/resizable VG # 0 MAX LV 256 Cur LV 1 Open LV 0 MAX LV Size 2 TB Max PV 256 Cur PV 3 Act PV 3 VG Size 670.53 GB PE Size 32 MB Total PE 21457 Alloc PE / Size 21457 / 670.53 GB Free PE / Size 0 / 0 VG UUID hf074V-P9DA-AmCU-F2pr-nfdD-QTaA-Ic0lH5 --- List of logical volumes --- pvdata -- logical volume "/dev/volgroup_001/loggroup_001" at offset 0 pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 1 is empty pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 2 is empty .... pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 254 is empty pvdata -- logical volume struct at offset 255 is empty --- List of physical extents --- PE: 00000 LV: 001 LE: 15497 PE: 00001 LV: 001 LE: 15498 .... PE: 05958 LV: 001 LE: 21455 PE: 05959 LV: 001 LE: 21456 --- List of physical volume UUIDs --- 001: 5nc71v-D2mv-RpBX-3c3f-17tI-9ChT-mYctTg 002: 8bsBQR-bTiI-Zky5-Qvpu-oMtp-x62p-0uWwha 003: 6xAILO-KhgO-0U0c-Ir88-xZ8y-AIlc-JtPjDg lvmdiskscan -- reading all disks / partitions (this may take a while...) lvmdiskscan -- /dev/sda [ 298.09 GB] USED LVM whole disk lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hdc [ 186.31 GB] USED LVM whole disk lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hdd [ 186.31 GB] USED LVM whole disk lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda1 [ 1004.03 MB] Primary LINUX swap partition [0x82] lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda2 [ 27.59 GB] Primary LINUX native partition [0x83] lvmdiskscan -- /dev/hda3 [ 45.95 GB] Primary LINUX native partition [0x83] lvmdiskscan -- 4 disks lvmdiskscan -- 3 whole disks lvmdiskscan -- 0 loop devices lvmdiskscan -- 0 multiple devices lvmdiskscan -- 0 network block devices lvmdiskscan -- 3 partitions lvmdiskscan -- 0 LVM physical volume partitions VGCFGRESTORE ===========vgcfgrestore -- INFO: using backup file "/etc/lvmconf/volgroup_001.conf" --- Volume group --- VG Name volgroup_001 VG Access read/write VG Status NOT available/resizable VG # 0 MAX LV 256 Cur LV 1 Open LV 0 MAX LV Size 2 TB Max PV 256 Cur PV 3 Act PV 3 VG Size 670.53 GB PE Size 32 MB Total PE 21457 Alloc PE / Size 21457 / 670.53 GB Free PE / Size 0 / 0 VG UUID hf074V-P9DA-AmCU-F2pr-nfdD-QTaA-Ic0lH5 --- Logical volume --- LV Name /dev/volgroup_001/loggroup_001 VG Name volgroup_001 LV Write Access read/write LV Status NOT available LV # 1 # open 0 LV Size 670.53 GB Current LE 21457 Allocated LE 21457 Allocation next free Read ahead sectors 1024 Block device 58:0 --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/sda VG Name volgroup_001 PV Size 298.09 GB [625142448 secs] / NOT usable 32.19 MB [LVM: 165 KB] PV# 1 PV Status available Allocatable yes (but full) Cur LV 1 PE Size (KByte) 32768 Total PE 9537 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 9537 PV UUID 5nc71v-D2mv-RpBX-3c3f-17tI-9ChT-mYctTg --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/hdc VG Name volgroup_001 PV Size 186.31 GB [390721968 secs] / NOT usable 32.19 MB [LVM: 151 KB] PV# 2 PV Status NOT available Allocatable yes (but full) Cur LV 1 PE Size (KByte) 32768 Total PE 5960 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 5960 PV UUID 8bsBQR-bTiI-Zky5-Qvpu-oMtp-x62p-0uWwha --- Physical volume --- PV Name /dev/hdd VG Name volgroup_001 PV Size 186.31 GB [390721968 secs] / NOT usable 32.19 MB [LVM: 151 KB] PV# 3 PV Status NOT available Allocatable yes (but full) Cur LV 1 PE Size (KByte) 32768 Total PE 5960 Free PE 0 Allocated PE 5960 PV UUID 6xAILO-KhgO-0U0c-Ir88-xZ8y-AIlc-JtPjDg Thanks if advance and long live to CentOS! Guy Boisvert