Disk in Use

See also RAID Metadata Removal

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=242935

http://diehealthy.org/linux/dmraids-metadata-mdadm

http://www.sturge.ca/?p=108

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=667317

This commonly occurs after using a drive in BIOS-based RAID or when re-using a drive that was previosly used in the older dmraid-style software RAID.

When using or preparing a disk or partition for use on Linux, you may see an error such as one of these:

/dev/sdxx is apparently in use by the system; will not make a filesystem here!

Device or resource busy

mount: /dev/sdxx already mounted or /mount/point busy

1. Check if the filesystem is already mounted

   • mount

   • cat /etc/mtab

2. Check if LVM is involved

   • pvs

   • vgs

   • lvs

3. Check if Linux software RAID is involved

   • dmsetup status

   • dmsetup ls

   • dmraid -r

Carefully try one of these options based on what you found (in no particular order):

• dmsetup remove xxxxxxxx

• dmraid -r -E

• dmraid -r -E -f [pdc,nvidia]

• dmraid -r -E /dev/sd[a,b,c...]