I've just tried creating a test partition on the only advanced format hard drive I have, which is a new Toshiba DT01ACA200 attached to a system still running squeeze (but with the 3.2.0 kernel from backports), with partitionmanager 1.0.2-1 (identical functionality presumably to the wheezy version).
Creating a partition leaving the "free space before" at its default value of 0MiB results in a partition that begins at sector 63. The HTML "operation report" produced at the end shows that ext4 filesystem creation produces the following warning: Command: mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) /dev/sdb1 alignment is offset by 512 bytes. This may result in very poor performance, (re)-partitioning suggested. Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) Stride=1 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks i.e. the partition is reported misaligned by 1 logical sector. If I repeat the test but specify a "free space before" of 1MiB, then the new partition begins at sector 16065 (see below), and filesystem creation reports : Command: mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 mke2fs 1.41.12 (17-May-2010) /dev/sdb1 alignment is offset by 3584 bytes. This may result in very poor performance, (re)-partitioning suggested. Filesystem label= OS type: Linux Block size=4096 (log=2) Fragment size=4096 (log=2) Stride=1 blocks, Stripe width=0 blocks i.e. the partition is reported misaligned by 7 logical sectors. The seemingly bizarre start sector 16065 would correspond in "virtual" (BIOS- style) CHS disk geometry to 255heads x 63sectors, i.e. 1 cylinder, so it's possible that partitionmanager has a further bug where it works in cylinders even when claiming to work in MiB :) It is not possible to use the "free space before" widget to enter a quantity in any unit other than MiB, so it appears impossible to create a properly aligned partition. Cheers, Nick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org