Bad primary partition

[Richard Hall <hall@ns.utk.edu>]

After doing a low-level format of the hard drive and running a
verification check without complaint, I am unable to install Debain
because when the installation program runs fdisk to set up the swap
partition, it immediately chokes, saying "FATAL ERROR: Bad primary
partition".  I can't believe that the hard drive is bad, as it worked fine
under NT before the formatting, and the SCSI disk utilities detect no
problems.  What can I do?

It's a Seagate ST34371W with an Adaptec 2940 Ultra controller.

Richard Hall
Network Services
University of Tennessee