Bad primary partition 3: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder.

Hello!
I am trying to install Arch linux and when i choose to manually create partition I receive the following error:
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder.
Press any key to exit cfdisk
The output of the fdisk -l is:
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xac4fac4f
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1 992+ 42 SFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 1 13 102400 42 SFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 13 7092 56858624 42 SFS
/dev/sda4 7092 19458 99327832 42 SFS
Disk /dev/sdb: 2021 MB, 2021654016 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 1927 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x74eaf53e
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 659 674816 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sdb1: 691 MB, 691011584 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 659 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x74eaf53e
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1p1 * 1 659 674816 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
I found an old topic(http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=33916) on this problem but the solution was
try cfdisk -z /dev/device. However, this will wipe all your partitions.
I would like to keep my partitions as they are. Somebody suggested using testdisk for Windows to repair the bad partitions but I'm not sure of how to use it. Can anybody help me please? Thank you!

Are you still frustrated because of cfdisk which gives you something like this:
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder
Press any key to exit cfdisk
Here, I'm trying to install archlinux on a pendrive and I get almost the same error when trying to manually format the disk. The only difference is that it mention partition 0 instead of partition 3... I guess there is a bug in the livecd?
I'm having this problem with archlinux-2010.05-core-i686.iso.
Last edited by manouchk (2011-04-02 19:06:00)

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Bad primary partition 1: Partion ends in the final partial cylinder

i just got a new laptop, dell inspiron 6400.
it's partition table is set up this way:
1) a 55 meg partition which is supposedly the dell boot utility
2) a 10 gig recovery partition that contains the completely original HD
3) a 81 gig partition which has Vista on it
4) a 2 gig partition for MediaDirect
i used dd to backup the 10 gig partition, and was about to install arch. cfdisk crapped out with the error message:
"FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder"
ok...i'm stuck. gparted is able to go in and see all the partitions as fine, and it can delete partition 2, but if i try to format a new volume, it craps out.
now here's the kicker. if i go into vista and into computer management, i can go there, format the 10gig to ntfs and it works fine.
any ideas? thanks.

Does anyone know what else could be done than what is described here???

[Solved]Partition ends in the final partial cylinder

I am trying to install Arch linux on Virutualbox.
I use GParted LiveCD to resize my partition, when I run cfdisk I receive the following error:
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 1: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder
The output of the fdisk -lu is:
root@debian:/mnt# fdisk -lu
Disk /dev/sda: 10.7 GB, 10737418240 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1305 cylinders, total 20971520 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0e770e76
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 18876415 9438176+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 18876416 20971519 1047552 83 Linux
The messages of GParted GUI
Partition Filesystem Size Used Unused Flags
/dev/sda1 ntfs 9.00 GiB 5.25 GiB 3.76 GiB boot
/dev/sda2 ext4 1023.00MiB 33.36 MiB 989.64 MiB
Any help?Thx.
Last edited by nopriler (2011-04-19 05:20:29)

i can't find the fist one as well.
maybe i am mixed with another software.
the "align to -> cylinder" is in patition -> new
at the bottom of the left raw.
ezik

Cfdisk error: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder

I was rearraging some partitions last night. I have two hard drives, both 1TB. They are (now) laid out as follows:
Drive 1:
- 40GB partition for Windows system
- 40GB partition for Arch system
- 920GB partition for backed up documents
Drive 2:
- 80GB utility partition
- 920GB partition for documents
I used fdisk to create the last partition on the first drive (the first two partitions were already in place). I pretty much just told it to create a 'n'ew, 'p'rimary partition and then accepted the default options in order to get a partition that filled the remainder of the drive. None of the partitions were in place on the second drive, and I tried using fdisk, but when I tried to create the first partition, it wouldn't allow me to start it at the beginning of the drive (it insisted on making the first partition start at sector 2048 rather than sector 63). I figured I'd try out cfdisk to see if it would allow me to start the partition on sector 63, and it did. Got those partitions created just fine using cfdisk.
However, I went back to check my work after I had created all the partitions and hit a source of confusion. cfdisk spouts out an error whenever I try to view the first drive. It says partition number 2 is bad and that the "Partition ends in the final partial cylinder". (Not sure if partition number 2 refers to the second or third partition. (Is the index zero-based?)) cfdisk has no trouble viewing my second drive, and fdisk has no problem viewing either of them. I'm a bit of a newbie with regards this sort of thing, so any idea why cfdisk has issues with my first drive?
The drives' layouts, as reported by fdisk:
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000203804160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953523055 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xea8fea8f
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 78124094 39062016 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 78124095 156248189 39062047+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 156248190 1953523054 898637432+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xead3ead3
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 63 156248189 78124063+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 156248190 1953520064 898635937+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Last edited by nonoitall (2010-07-07 21:25:42)

plasticeraser wrote:I would like to replace Ubuntu with Arch, unfortunately when I tried earlier I received, a cfdisk error that said "cfdisk error: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder". So I can't just delete the Ubuntu Partitions.
So you /do/ want to remove Ubuntu completely.
plasticeraser wrote:Since I'm at college I really don't want to format anything and possibly losing anything.
Maybe I'm not following, but it looks like you want to format (delete) your Ubuntu partitions, but then again you don't want to format anything. You can't just install Arch on top of your Ubuntu partitions and think it will just overwrite Ubuntu by putting Arch in the existing partitions. That'll just create a huge mess.
If your existing /home is on a separate partition, you can just use fdisk (instead of cfdisk) to delete Ubuntu's / partition so that Arch can use that instead. You should just use an installation medium to do the install process, it really is just a matter or removing your existing distro's / and telling Arch to install to that partition while still preserving your Windows 7 partition(s) and existing /home.

Partitions, installing , raw- no_fs and "Bad primary partition"

I have been using Archlinux with kde-mod, installed with the Chakra live-cds for some time on a couple of different machines. You may be aware Chakra has now moved away from archlinux to roll it's own distro so this is my first attempt to install "The Arch Way".
I have an HP dv6t-2000 laptop, preinstalled with Windows 7, though I'm really fed-up with Windows at this point I do want to keep it installed on the machine.
The setup of the hard drive is currently (as shown in the Windows7 partition utility):
SYSTEM NTFS 199MB (System, Active, Primary Partition)
C: NTFS 394.12GB (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
RECOVERY (D:) NTFS 12.85GB (Primary Partition)
(there used to be a partition titled HP_TOOLS which I deleted a while ago (that may have been a mistake, I don't think I backed it up, I think it was last time I got really pissed off with windows and wanted to install Linux immediately)
What I have trid doing, starting with the configuration as above it:
> using the windows utility to shrink the C: partition to make space
> booting into gparted live CD
> creating an extended partition
> creating boot (ext2), root (ext4), home (ext4) and swap partitions within this
> booting the archlinux 64 bit netinstall CD
> when I get to Prepare Hard drive - manually configure I see something like:
/dev/sda raw->no_fs
/dev/sda1 raw->no_fs
/dev/sda2 raw->no_fs
/dev/sda3 raw->no_fs
> If I go to manually partition hard drive for sda I get the message
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder
At this point I'm getting tired and liable to do something reckless (like when I deleted the HP_TOOLS partition), I I thought I better stop, take a breather and ask some people with more experience.
I'm sorry If I am short on details here, as I say I've spent a bit too long trying to sort this out and got tired and confused, I will fill in any details that are asked for, thank you for reading.

`/dev/sda1 raw->no_fs` means "you didn't tell me what's on here yet", the installer should do some autodetection but this is not implemented yet. so don't worry about this, just leave them alone.
the other one, not sure

Bad Primary Partition

I have a PC with two identical Western Digital 750 GB S-ATA drives. The drives are in perfect working order. I have installed Debian and Slackware on them fine. Now when I go to install Arch and select the drives using 'cfdisk', I get this error:
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 1: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder - Press any key to exit cfdisk.
I then tried to install Ubuntu, works. I install Debian again, it works. Why does Arch or cfdisk not allow me to partition my drives?

THCMyst wrote:Have you tried using fdisk? I had an issue with this using cfdisk, and as weird as it sounds, I used fdisk to partition, went back into cfdisk, and everything was in order. Not sure how that works, but it's a suggestion to try.
That can and will cause problems if cfdisk is invoked afterwards. cfdisk is very strick when creating partitions or dealing with a disk with a partition table, in a way that is good, some partition managers (an example is partition magic) will completely refuse to do anything on a disk that does not have a very strict partition layout.
Linux will boot from pretty much any partition and partition layout and will not complain at all, but older versions of windows (I don't have experience with anything newer than xp) can be quite picky and have problems with "uncommon" partition layouts (such as extended partitions mysteriously vanishing) which cfdisk avoids.
Like I have said before, if there is no need to edit the partitions (as in partitions created before running arch's installer) then selecting the partition, filesystem and mountpoint should work without problems.

Cfdisk fails on partitioning- bad primary partition

Hello. I'm trying to install Arch Linux on my notebook- Asmobile S96SP.
If I try to use manual disk partitioning, then I see black screen of cfdisk with this error:
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partitions ends in the final partical cylinder.
Press any key to exit cfdisk.
I've got just one disk (250GB SATA), and 4 partitions on it.
I want to install Linux on E:.
What's wrong? Someone know how to resolve this problem?
Thanks!

Ok, I fixed it by remove E: partition to make free space (unattached).
Now i've got the second problem. I hear "peep" from my notebook all the time. It's problem with ACPI, becouse if I disable acpi on startup, then i don't hear nothing. I found this: http://www.inliniac.net/blog/2008/07/25 … state.html
but i don't know how can i add to "options" file 2 processors, and how to update initrd on Arch.
/proc/acpi/processor/CPU1/
/proc/acpi/processor/CPU2/
Thanks for reply.

ERROR: Partition 4 extends beyond the end of the disk

Hi,
I'm trying to install Solaris 10 on my x86 laptop. Everyting is OK until the start of the installation and as I try to start the installation it prints an error message:
ERROR: Partition 4 extends beyond the end of the disk
Output of sfdisk -l /dev/hda command is as follows:
Disk /dev/hda: 155061 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 516096 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0
Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 0+ 20798- 20799- 10482381 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,254,63)
/dev/hda2 20798+ 20829 32- 15907+ be Solaris boot
/dev/hda3 20830 53565 32736 16498944 bf Unknown
/dev/hda4 53568 155060 101493 51152472 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,33,1)
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,15,63) found (1023,80,63)
/dev/hda5 53568+ 138900 85333- 43007800+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 138901+ 142869 3969- 2000344+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda7 142870+ 155060 12191- 6144232+ 83 Linux
I'm trying to install boot partition on /dev/hda2 and the Solaris on /dev/hda3.
Is there any way to overcome this error without repartitioning the disk ?

I agree that there is no obvious error from the data you've provided.
What version of Solaris are you running
uname -a
Are you using a SCSI disk or a SATA drive?
On Solaris it affect which driver we use.
I've very curious what the geometry stored in the Solaris disk label is.
Would it be possible for you to dump the fdisk partition table
and the Solaris disk labels and vtoc and send them to me.
dd if=/dev/dsk/c0d0p0 of=/tmp/mbr count=1
dd if=/dev/dsk/c0d0p2 of=/tmp/pbr count=3
[email protected]
As a workaround:
Since partition is 82 is a linux swap partition, it should be relatively easy to
shrink that partition by a few cylinders and then run makeswap
with no loss of information.

How would I fix a bad block on a partition?

I've been trying to resize a Western Digital 250GB drive that has Windows XP on the primary /dev/hda partition. PartitonMagic reports "Error 1529 while executing batch" & "Error 1529: Information mismatch in directory entry" I've read it up and the solution is supposed to be running "chkdsk /f"but I've run "chkdisk /r & /f" multiple times and I still get this error.
I also tried to partition form a gparted cd, it tells me that there is at least 1 bad block and it cannot continue. It suggested chkdsk and running ntfsresize with --bad-sectors. I did this with "ntfsresize -b -s182880MB /dev/sda1" it seemed to have worked but when I logged in to Windows I noticed that while my C: was resized to 182GB, no unallocated space was created. (Not sure if I missed a step in this process) So partition magic and other apps show a 250GB+ drive with no unallocated free space. While my C:\ shows up as 182GB.
I also tried Ultimate Boot Disk, with qtparted & simplyMephis liveCD with qtparted. UBD just said there were errors, simplyMephis said there was at least 1 bad block on the drive. I tried running badblocks commands from Mephis but it looked like it would take days to complete at the speed it was doing it.
Any more ideas? Has anyone else come across these problems?

You may try to launch a "cfdisk" from a live CD to see if the partitions are set up correctly and maybe write a proper partition table. Be warned, this is a formatting tool, so you can loose all your data if manipulated incorrectly.
Moreover, partitionning a drive while the system uses it is not a good idea. Always prefer doing this from a live system (that uses only RAM).

RAID1 Partitions disappeared when one of the mirrored HDD is used as an external drive for data rescue.

Hi, I have mirrored build of two identical 1TB HDD in my Xserve Late 2006 (RAID 1) in Bay 2 and Bay3. When I took one HDD out and connected it as an external drive to my MacBook Pro, only the first partition appeared. That is, for instance, I have RAID partition A1, A2, A3 in Xserve but only A1 appears when the drive is connected to MacBook Pro as an external drive. Is there any way to let partition A2, A3 appear too? Thanks.

Oh, I didn't realise you were using the hardware RAID card for this. In that case, yes, that makes sense, you won't see the other partitions because they're handled by the RAID card. I admit I'd never tried it with a RAID 1 mirror where you might expect to - I've only used RAID 5 on the hardware cards where there's no expectation, of course, to pull a drive to relocate the data.
So you may ask why not just use a single partition for my RAID1 design. The reason is that I prefer to partition HDD because it is good for HDD lifespan. I don't like to design my parition schema to be just a single big parition with 1T Hard Drive since all data are going to be stored scattered and hence, taking longer for spindle reading.
I don't agree with most of this statement. I've not seen anything that indicates partitioning improves lifespan - for any given data, the disk spins the exact same number of times, and the heads move the same number of times, regardless of the partitioning - partitioning is only a logical, not a physical, construct.
As for the data being scattered and spindle latency, that's nowhere near the problem it used to be in the past thanks to faster spindles and larger caches. In addition, Mac OS X uses a dynamic reallocation/fragmentation system that automatically (re)allocates files as they're used, meaning you don't have the level of fragmentation that you used to have.
The primary benefit of partitioning is to restrict file system sizes so that you don't get a runaway proceess filling up the entire disk. Even that is less of a problem - when an 8GB drive was large it didn't take much to fill it, but you'd have to have a pretty rampant process to fill up a 1TB drive before alarms started ringing.

I need help on my MacBook Pro. Recently I've deleted another partition of my disk from the disk utility and I found out that my disk capacity wasn't get into the normal one which is 750GB. Meanwhile I installed window 7 into the partition disk.

I need help on restoring my disk capacity back to normal. I installed window 7 into the partition disk through bootcamp and I deleted it from disk utility. After I erase the partition disk,I get my capacity to 499GB but not 750GB. Do I need to reinstall my MacBook or something to do with the restoring?

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Rodney Lai wrote:
I installed window 7 into the partition disk through bootcamp and I deleted it from disk utility
You shouldn't do it. You have to erase the Windows volume with Boot Camp Assistant, so it will restore the space onto the OS X volume and that volume will have 750 GB.
As you did it with Disk Utility, you have to resize your OS X partition manually:
1. Open Disk Utility, select your hard disk at the top of the sidebar, and go to Partition tab.
2. You will see a bar with Macintosh HD. You have to click it at the bottom right corner and drag it to the end of the bar, so Macintosh HD will use all the space of the hard drive, and press Apply.
3. Close Disk Utility and your OS X partition will have 750 GB

My windows(8.1 64bit) partition is read only from the mac(yosemite) side of things. Anybody have a clue on how to fix this? Also, slightly frustrating as well, windows crashes every time I attempt to open a file from the mac partition.

my windows(8.1 64bit) partition is read only from the mac(yosemite) side of things. Anybody have a clue on how to fix this? Also, slightly frustrating as well, windows crashes every time I attempt to open a file from the mac partition.

All Office applications will also try to open a temporary work file in the same location as the source file. This implies the source file directory also needs to be writable for this temporary file. Since the default HFS+ driver provides only read-only access, such temporary files will fail to open, and will cause the application to fail.
As a test copy the file you want to edit, say an Excel spreadsheet from the OSX file system to the C: drive on the Windows side and try to open it. If you look in this directory, you should see two files, the source and a temporary file. You may have to force the temporary file to be opened on a read-write file system, by manipulating the folder for temporary files.

When I restart my computer and hold the option key after creating a bootable usb with windows 7 and partitioning only the original partition shows up. Not the windows one or the bootable usb.

     Okay so first things first this isn't the newest macbook pro. When I open about my mac and go to system report it says it is a Macbook Pro 3,1 and the Boot Rom Version say MBP31.0070.B07. Originally when starting up Boot Camp Assistant there where only two options, the "create windows 7 bootable usb" was not there at all. So after some editing and helpful tutorials I was able to get the option show up and created a bootable usb with windows 7 and downloaded the support software onto a separate flash drive. Finally I did the last step and created a second partition for windows. Once the process is complete my computer automatically restarts.
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     I forgot to mention that I am running OS X 10.9.3. Okay any body want to help me out? Iv'e been at this for hours and can't get an inch closer to having windows. Please and thank you!
P.S. If I missed a discussion that answer my question just point me to it. Iv'e been looking for a while, but who knows i might have missed one.

The only known way to make it work on an external drive is by first installing Windows onto an internal drive, then cloning the install to an external Thunderbolt drive. Thunderbolt is seen as an extension of the internal bus, so Windows doesn't see it as an external device.

Partition Failed Partition failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn't be completed. CAN NOT ALLOCATE MEMORY

I plug usb mass storage device to my macbook pro i7 than every thing is stack and i reinforce to shutdown and than I start again but mac fail to boot again.
I tried different optiones in disk utility in mac os startup disk. but still fail to repair, erase and partition. I try to fix with the steps listed in
https://discussions.apple.com/message/13288923#13288923
but it fail to partition with the msg:
Partition Failed
Partition failed with the error: POSIX reports: The operation couldn’t be completed.cannot allocate memory
pls pls pls help urgentely on this matter I stop working.
Kind Regards,
pe

Hi again OGELTHORPE.
I've already run two hardware tests. One quick one and one extended one. It was unable to pick anything up.
It's like everything is running perfectly, but when I go to erase the HDD or partition it, it pops up with the error message. Even when I try to erase and partition using "Terminal", I received the same error message.
It's beginning to do my head in, but will see if replacing the SATA cable will make any difference. If it doesn't, I'll hazard a guess it could be the Logic Board.
Thanks again for your suggestions!
L.

HT1766 I have made the C drive on my computer very small, with the intention that all data would be stored on the D partition. Can I change the destination for my iPad backup to the D drive?

I have made the C drive on my computer very small and try to put all the data on the D partition. Can I change the destination for my iPad backup to the D drive?

See if this post from turingtest2 helps : https://discussions.apple.com/message/24351688
If not then you might be better off asking in the iTunes For Windows forum, you may be more likely to get better help there.

Bad primary partition 3: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder.

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