[Solved] Partition does not end on cylinder boundary

[Sector11]

I have had reason to check my HDD today and see:

Code: [Select]

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!

[VastOne]

Nothing to worry about...  See this link

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.

[Sector11]

OH!  Good... relief

Strange I have never seen it before though.