How to fix FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 1: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder
This came up with the Lexar Jumpdrive that I was attempting to re-partition. According to sources round the net, the partition tables might have been overlapping.
Here is the error in its full context (if you didn’t catch the title):
FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 1: Partition ends in the final partial cylinder
The solution is to first blow away all the partitions, write, (reboot is advised if you’re asked to reboot to see changes to the table), then create your new partitions over it.
Update: Just to add some more detail to this process.. This was done entirely in Linux. Since cfdisk (curses fdisk program) bombs out without allowing you to edit your partitions, you’ll need to edit the usb drive’s partitions by using ol’ fdisk.
Its not that bad once you get used to it. Start it as you would with cfdisk (`fdisk /dev/usb_drive`), hit the help menu, get a printout of all the partitions, delete the partitions (using the help menu again), and then write the partition table to the usb drive.
Reboot if it asks. You should be able to re-partition normally after this.
hey pal , thanks really .
i was searching for this .
but my problem is different .
Its in my harddisk .
actually im having a 40gb ide hdd .
i use cfdisk to install slackware , and when i took out cfdisk , it showed an empty 4mb partition in my primary partition , where my windows c drv is avail .
if i make the 4mb into a fat partition , then i get this bad partition error .
though i can install slackware , i couldnt get lilo or grub to work .
so , cant boot into slackware .
lilo returns some #1 error .
bootcat
May 25, 2007 at 9:43 am
Just hit this problem on a usb drive that had been formated as hfs, when i needed to go back to ext3 i had the problem. Thanks for the solution.
gregf
July 7, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Thanks a lot mate, I ran into this today when trying to create a removable drive bootable for my Asus Eee PC. Cheers!
N David Brown
December 25, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I’m working on my asus eee as well, and this definitely helped. trying to put zeee on it!
HMP
March 4, 2008 at 6:37 am
You can do the partition killing with cfdisk too, just add -z argument:
% cfdisk -z /dev/…
Grumbel
July 25, 2008 at 1:17 pm