Partitioning WD Advanced Format Drives in Linux

Using parted

Here’s a transcript from formatting a WD20EARS drive on an x86_64,
RHEL5.5, stock box. Setting the unit format to sectors is bloody
important!

[root@example ~]# parted /dev/sdb
GNU Parted 1.8.1
Using /dev/sdb
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print                                                            

Model: ATA WDC WD20EARS-00M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start  End  Size  Type  File system  Flags

(parted) unit s
(parted) mkpart
Partition type?  primary/extended? primary                                
File system type?  [ext2]? 
Start? 64                                                                 
End? -1                                                                   
(parted) print                                                            

Model: ATA WDC WD20EARS-00M (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start  End          Size         Type     File system  Flags
1      64s    3907029167s  3907029104s  primary

(parted) quit                                                             
Information: Don't forget to update /etc/fstab, if necessary.

Using fdisk

I haven’t tried this but here’s the command with flags that will align
the partition to 4K boundaries:

fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sdb