I was creating a RAID array and got this error: mdadm: /dev/sda1 is too small: 0K
mdadm: create aborted

Of course sda1 is not too small, both partitions sda1 and sdb1 are identical in size:

Disk /dev/sda: 2000.3 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         974     7823623+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2             975        3407    19543072+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3   *        3408       60801   461017305   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           60802      243201  1465128000    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           60802      231009  1367195728+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6          231010      243201    97932208+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1         974     7823623+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb2             975        3407    19543072+  83  Linux
/dev/sdb3   *        3408       60801   461017305   83  Linux

 The solution is simple, use partprobe to read-read the partitions

Just run:

partprobe

And it will work, but the weird thing is that these partitions were created a few reboots ago.  This is obviously some weird quick with the older mdadm version.

mdadm, dev, sda, solutioni, creating, raid, array, aborted, partitions, sdb, identical, disk, gb, bytes, sectors, cylinders, identifier, linux, extended, partprobe, reboots,

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