Installation problems - disk alignment offset

[Gabry_van_Winden]

When installing ubuntu on my laptop I get a warning that indicates the partition is misaligned by 3584 bytes. I have consulted various topics on adjusting the partition alignment, all to no avail. I have succeeded in moving the starting point of the partition to various points, 512 bytes, 2048 bytes, 4096 bytes. on each occasion I still get the same message indicating the same value, 3584 bytes.

This is what my fdisk -l reports looks like:

Disk /dev/sda: 30.2 GB, 30198980608 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3671 cylinders, total 58982384 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Alignment offset: 3584 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0008c10f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 4096 58982383 29489144 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.



I am getting the impression that the real problem is the offset of the disk itself, but I have no clue as of how to fix this. If anyone can help me out it would be greatly appreciated.

[tgalati4]

That is an old disk. What is the make and model? Perhaps it has a security/encryption feature that needs a special driver.

Rather than fight it, create a small first partition of 100 MB, then install on your second partition. gparted will usually come up with a warning that your partition does not end on a physical sector boundary and ask you if you want to correct it.

If you don't want to waste the space on the first partition, install TinyCore (http://www.tinycorelinux.net/install.html) as a backup.

[Gabry_van_Winden]

Thanks for your response, I will try this out tonight.

[Gabry_van_Winden]

I have created a first partition of 100mb as you advised, yet now I get the message during installation that the partition starts at an offset of 3072 bytes from the minimum alignmend of this disk.

The disk is a ATA SW80MSAMCN-32-G, I hope this helps.

[Gabry_van_Winden]

Bump.

Is there anyone out there who can help me? Do you need further details on my device and configuration?

[Luke M]

This may be informative:

http://www.novell.com/support/kb/doc.php?id=7007193



There's one special case: When internal 4k block sizes were introduced, some HDD manufacturers actually addressed the classical DOS partition table misalignment by shifting the logical sector counting by one, so a start at sector 63 would translate to sector 64 (i.e. internal block 8). Some HDDs even were configurable with a switch to do this shifting by one. The SATA spec did even provide a mechanism for the drives to report such an offset, so the OS can take the appropriate steps to optimize performance. To our knowledge not many such drives exist; and only a subset of them reports the offset correctly.



What OS did this machine originally come with?