partition table not sticky

["J. B" <bakshi12@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I have tried to partition a new HDD. fidsk reports

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Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel with disk identifier 0x3d9b1a92.
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
After that, of course, the previous content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

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After "w" it reports

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Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
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And next time fdisk again suggest "Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel"

I have repeatedly do the same but no luck. no luck with cfdisk. Changes are not stored !!!

only gparted is successful but it makes my 320 GB HDD to 280 GB. 40GB lost !!!

What is the problem with fdisk and cfdisk ???