LinuxQuestions.org - How to remove raid metadata?

Hi all

Normally when I have a drive which contains raid metadata e.g. from fakeraid or a hardware raid card I can get rid of it with:

dmraid -r -E /dev/sdX

Or if that doesnt work, doing a simple dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX normally works

But I have 4 WD RE4 drives here and neither option seems to work. dmraid just gives me a CRC error when it reads the drive. I know the drives are fine and theyve been checked with smart + WD diagnostics.

When I try to install CentoS 5 or CentOS 6 it complains about the metadata on the drives.

The actual error on dmraid is:

Quote:

ddf1: physical drives with CRC 5CD0C0DB, expected FFFFFFFF on /dev/sda
ERROR: ddf1: Cannot find physical drive description on /dev/sda!
ERROR ddf1: setting up RAID device /dev/sad
nor aid disks and with names: "/dev/sda"

Gives the same CRC error for all disks so clearly something strange the raid controller did

Any suggestions?

Thanks