scsi-partitioning

[Gerald Richter <richter@oehtb.at>]

Hello Debianists!

have a question regarding the access of a scsi-disk...
dmesg shows:

sym53c8xx: at PCI bus 2, device 4, function 0
sym53c8xx: setting PCI_COMMAND_PARITY...(fix-up)
sym53c8xx: 53c895 detected
sym53c895-0: rev 0x2 on pci bus 2 device 4 function 0 irq 11
sym53c895-0: ID 7, Fast-40, Parity Checking
sym53c895-0: SCSI bus mode change from 80 to 80.
scsi0 : sym53c8xx-1.7.1-20000726
scsi : 1 host.
  Vendor: COMPAQ    Model: BD009222C7        Rev: B016
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Detected scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
  Vendor: IBM       Model: DNES-309170W      Rev: SAH0
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 03
Detected scsi disk sdb at scsi0, channel 0, id 2, lun 0
scsi : detected 2 SCSI disks total.
sym53c895-0-<0,*>: FAST-20 WIDE SCSI 40.0 MB/s (50 ns, offset 31)
SCSI device sda: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 17773524 [8678 MB]
[8.7 GB]
sym53c895-0-<2,*>: FAST-20 WIDE SCSI 40.0 MB/s (50 ns, offset 31)
SCSI device sdb: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 17916240 [8748 MB]
[8.7 GB]

- cfdisk on /dev/sda works fine.

- cfdisk on /dev/sdb tells me:
                 FATAL ERROR: Bad signature on partition table
                          Press any key to exit cfdisk

how do I proceed if I want to partition sdb?

thanks for hints,
Gerald.