FATAL ERROR in cfdisk command!

Question

Command : cfdisk -P s /dev/sdb gives the output FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 0: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder

while "Parted -l" successfully lists the partition table for the drive.

Plz explain the FATAL ERROR part. How can i list the partition table using the cfdisk command itself?

Answer 1

The partition table might be invalid. How did you partition this disk? Some OSes and tools do make technically invalid partitions. They still work with that OS, but do not play well with other OSes. This could be what is happening.

You could try plain old fdisk:

fdisk -lu /dev/sdb

I've seen cfdisk be quite strict(this is good in most cases), but fdisk or others will be able to show disk info rather than exiting with an error - as you have seen with parted.