I have had reason to check my HDD today and see:
sector11 @ sector11
27 Feb 13 | 18:44:55 ~
$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for sector11:
Disk /dev/sda: 250 GB, 250056737280 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1959 15735636 83 Linux
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 1959 3916 15719602 83 Linux
Warning: Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 3916 4439 4200997 82 Linux swap
Warning: Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda4 4439 30402 208547797 5 Extended
Warning: Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 4439 26370 176160757 83 Linux
Warning: Partition 5 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda6 26370 28386 16193520 83 Linux
Warning: Partition 6 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda7 28386 30402 16193520 83 Linux
Warning: Partition 7 does not end on cylinder boundary.
sector11 @ sector11
27 Feb 13 | 18:45:03 ~
$
Needless to say I am not a happy camper.
I just reformatted this drive earlier this month to install the latest (at that time) VSIDO ISO.
I was checking because I have problems with my external USB HDD as well (not related). So there is no way to use that to backup at the moment.
How worried do I have to be? I have "never" seen this warning before.
Can I 'fix' this in a relatively safe way?
Am I looking at
KABOOM!
Nothing to worry about... See this link (http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2009/09/12/why-partition-x-does-now-end-on-cylinder-boundary-warnings-dont-matter/)
Quote
This was a bit disconcerting at first, but after a few minutes of thinking it dawned on me that modern systems use LBA (Logical Block Addressing) instead of CHS (Cylinder/Head/Sector) to address disk drives. If we view the partition table using sectors instead of cylinders:
$ sfdisk -uS -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 9726 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0
Device Boot Start End #sectors Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 409662 409600 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 409663 4603966 4194304 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 4603967 156248189 151644223 8e Linux LVM
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 Empty
We can see that we end at a specific sector number, and start the next partition at that number plus one. I must say that I have grown quite fond of sfdisk and parted, and they sure make digging through DOS and GPT labels super easy.
OH! Good... relief
Strange I have never seen it before though.