I know the first release of Squeeze failed to properly align 4K sectors with partitions - but using the udeb from Wheezy fixed that for me - it could be fixed in a previous point release, and, it could be just a DOS partition table issue (what I used in that instance). I could have manually aligned partitions but I'm lazy.
NOTE: neither fdisk or parted is the cause of your original problem...
This is what I thought. I suspect it's got something to do with the kernel. I am just using the default Sqeeze kernel 2.6.32-5-686.
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2011-0699.html is when more support began upstream.
Sector size is a separate issue, hence your error message:-
[quote]
Warning: The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 512 bytes, but Linux says it is 2048 bytes.
[/quote]
Which seems to indicate a problem with the driver - and the kernel.
Check that your kernel supports larger sectors - see further in this post - if it does, file a bug report on the driver.
Also see http://lwn.net/Articles/377895/ for an overview of the problems.
NOTE: most Debian kernels do support the larger sectors, but you can check with:-
cat /sys/block/<drive_eg_sda>/queue/physical_block_size
Here's the output
/sys/block$ cat sda/queue/physical_block_size
4096
/sys/block$ cat dm-0/queue//physical_block_size
4096
/sys/block$ cat dm-1/queue//physical_block_size
4096
/sys/block$ cat dm-2/queue//physical_block_size
4096
$:/sys/block$ cat dm-3/queue//physical_block_size
4096
/sys/block$ cat dm-4/queue//physical_block_size
4096
/sys/block$ cat sr1/queue//physical_block_size
2048
/sys/block$ cat sr0/queue//physical_block_size
512
Isn't� EFI/UEFI needed to use GPT?
If I wipe this disk, I will definitely use GPT. I also have win 7 on the disk, wiki says 64bit win7 can be booted from GPT disk.
Cheers
Refs:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_format
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5655/~/how-to-install-a-wd-advanced-format-drive-on-a-non-windows-operating-system
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/whitepapers/eng/2579-771430.pdf
http://people.redhat.com/msnitzer/docs/io-limits.txt
What baffles me is when I run the WD data lifeguard tool from windows 7 partition, it comes back saying the following: