This was caused by some weird dmraid setup which kind of takes control of drives even if they're blank/unused.
1. Check the table.
dmsetup table
ddf1_44656c6c202020201000006010281f0b3f5195b77cf86172: 0 3905945600 linear 8:0 0
ddf1_44656c6c202020201000006010281f0b3f5195b77cf86172p3: 0 37124096 linear 253:0 284547072
ddf1_44656c6c202020201000006010281f0b3f5195b77cf86172p2: 0 283496448 linear 253:0 1050624
ddf1_44656c6c2020202010........