I bought a 3TB USB 3.0 external HDD today, with the intent of using it to boot ISOs, store data, etc. I normally create a GPT partition table with GParted, then check the alignment of the partitions with the CLI parted's 'align-check' (which also has switches like optimal, minimal, specifying partition # to check, etc).
My plan was to create a 512MB EFI, 2MB BIOS boot partition for GRUB, an additional 100GB partition for storing ISOs (to be booted in either UEFI or MBR mode, hence FAT32), and a 4th NTFS partition for data. But when I check the alignment, it is off, way off. So I once again deleted all partitions, then tried to use the instructions at http://rainbow.chard...e-using-parted/. They seemed about right. But when I return to GParted, there is a 256MB unallocated space before the 1st partition, and the 1st partition itself (FAT32) takes up nearly the entire disk, with a small unallocated amount to the right. Trying to resize the 1st partition to 512MB results in something along the lines of "the filesystem is bigger than the volume" error. So I format it to NTFS, reduce the size (no errors), then create the other partitions to the right, with no visible gaps in between each. I then reformat the 512MB NTFS back to FAT32, no issues.
Returning to parted to align-check reveals that the 1st partition is aligned, but the other 3 are now off. Do I need to put a 256MB unallocated space in between each partition?
I have no experience using CLI tools to create partitions. On all my internal notebook drives thusfar, alignment has always been correct, GParted seemed to do it automagically.
Now I'm really stumped................
Edited by Enigma83, 02 April 2015 - 03:55 AM.
