Problem with drives "tagged as part of hardware RAID array"

Hey there!

This problem is a real teaser for me. It's not specifically a SUSE
installation problem, it also happens installing FC4, or running
Knoppix or SUSE 9.3 Live. Only thing is, the SUSE installer is
specifically telling me what the problem is, so I'm writing here.

Anyways, my setup is this. I'm about to install SUSE 10.1 B9 on my
server. The storage here will be 5 x 120 GB Maxtor drives, all
identical model and firmware. Four of these drives used to be in my
desktop computer in a RAID-5 array using a hardware Promise Fasttrack
SX4000 controller.

First attempt at trying to install SUSE resulted in an error about a
drive having a problem so that it could not be used for installing on.
I don't remember the exact problem, but I believe it had to do with
being part of a hardware RAID array. I booted into DOS, and used
PartitionMagic to remove all partitions (funny, the partitions on each
RAID member matched those created on the RAID device as a whole (except
for sizes)).

Now, SUSE accepts the drives to be used, but gives a warning about two
of them. Again, I don't remember the exact phrasing (and I'm currently
low-level formatting one of them, so I can't reproduce the message for
quite some time), but it has to do with the drives being "reported by
the BIOS as part of a hardware RAID, but they're not really, and even
though kernel 2.4 supported Promise and some other hardware RAID brand,
kernels 2.6.x don't support these hardware RAID at all". I can
continue, set up my drives using software RAID-5, but just after that,
while preparing to install packages, the computer hangs (as in the
mouse pointer freezes, num lock turned off, keyboard dead, still light
in the mouse though).

This exact hanging also happens with Fedora Core 4. This gives no
warnings about any of the drives, though. I also tried booting SUSE 9.3
Live, but it also hangs in the same way. Knoppix as well.

I've tried putting the two drives back on the Fasttrack controller. It
recognized one of the disks as being part of its array. I tried
deleting the array, creating a new one using the two disks, then
deleting that, to get rid of whatever "tag" has been written to these
disks. The SUSE installer still gives its warning, and still hangs when
installing.

I then tried putting the two drives on my Mandriva desktop, doing "cp
/dev/random /dev/hdb" for awhile (stopping it prematurely though, under
the assumption that tags, MBR, partition table etc. is written to the
start of the disk). This effectively erased partition info etc. Now
Knoppix boots! But still SUSE gives the warning, and still it hangs.

I then tried using PowerMax to low-level format all five drives. I did
a quick format, it writes zeros to the first 300MB and last 100MB of
the disks. Still SUSE gives warning, and still it hangs.

I'm currently doing a full low-level format of the first of the two
troublesome disks. I'm not hoping for anything, though, since it seems
these "tags" or whatever it is, must be either at the front or the end
of the disk, and the quick format didn't remove them anyway.

I've tried rearranging cables and switching between controllers (there
are two) to confirm that it's not a cable or controller related thing.
The warning SUSE gives matches the disks, not the controller
arrangements.

Something on these disks are telling Linux that they're part of a
hardware RAID. If it's a "tag" I don't know, but in lack of a better
word, that's what I'm calling it. Whatever it is, I need to get rid of
it...

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Daniel

.

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