Hi, all!
Sorry for my english
I have such problem:

OS - FC4, installed latest mdadm
On motherboard's Silicon Image SATA-II controller mdadm RAID-5 works perfectly
NVRAID SATA controller on the same motherboard after formatting all the disks and making Linux raid autodetecting shows such a process (on trying to make RAID):

Code:

[root@fileserver ~]# mdadm --create -R -n 4 -c 256 -l 5 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1 /dev/sdg1 /dev/sdh1 
mdadm: /dev/sde1 does not appear to be an md device 

then

Code:

mdadm --examine /dev/sde1 
mdadm: No md superblock detected on /dev/sde1. 

I've got the same message (about 3 disks left) in /var/log/messages when trying to uncomment it in mdamm.conf commented strings

Code:

DEVICE /dev/sd[abcd]1 
ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid5 num-devices=4 devices=/dev/sd[abcd]1 
#DEVICE /dev/sd[efgh]1 
#ARRAY /dev/md1 level=raid5 num-devices=4 devices=/dev/sd[efgh]1 

Can anybody help with this problem?

Are you sure you initialised the /dev/hd?1 partitions and not the HDs themselves (/dev/hd?)?

Try formatting the hard drives normally and see if they work (run bonnie on them or something) before setting up the RAID.

yes, i'm sure about partitions
here is result of hdparm:

Code:

[root@fileserver ~]# hdparm -tT /dev/sde1

/dev/sde1:
 Timing cached reads:   3168 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1584.24 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for d
evice
 Timing buffered disk reads:  164 MB in  3.01 seconds =  54.53 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for d
evice

Oh. Looking at the mdadm create command more closely.. You didn't give it the RAID device to create, only the devices the RAID one should be made out of. Read The Friendly Manual

It should go something like "mdadm --create /dev/mdwhatever -blah -blah -blah /dev/blah /dev/blah /dev/blah"