Dear Maintainer, While using a script to partition a new disk, I found that parted sometimes starts a new partition 1 sector past the expected position. Here are the lines from the script that exercise parted, and some comments and additional information: --------------- Begin script and parted output ------------------------------ # Writing a blank msdos label on /dev/sdb: parted -s /dev/sdb mklabel msdos # Swap partition is number 8 # adding /dev/sdb1, to be mounted on /boot parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext4 0% 115MB # adding /dev/sdb2, to be mounted on / parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext4 115MB 20115MB # adding /dev/sdb3, to be mounted on /tmp parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart primary ext4 20115MB 23115MB # adding /dev/sdb4, the extended partition: parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart extended 23115MB 100% # adding /dev/sdb5, to be mounted on /home parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart logical ext4 23115MB 95340MB # adding /dev/sdb6, to be mounted on /var parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart logical ext4 95340MB 102840MB # adding /dev/sdb7, to be mounted on /usr/local parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart logical ext4 102840MB 122840MB Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance. # adding /dev/sdb8 for swap space: parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart logical linux-swap 122840MB 127840MB # adding /dev/sdb9, to be mounted on /spare parted -s /dev/sdb mkpart logical ext4 127840MB 200060MB Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance. ----------- End of script and parted o/p ------------------------------------ # The resulting partition table, in MB: Model: ATA WDC WD5000AAKX-2 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 500108MB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1.05MB 115MB 114MB primary 2 115MB 20115MB 19999MB primary 3 20115MB 23115MB 3000MB primary 4 23115MB 500108MB 476993MB extended lba 5 23116MB 95340MB 72224MB logical 6 95341MB 102840MB 7499MB logical 7 102840MB 122840MB 20000MB logical 8 122841MB 127840MB 5000MB logical 9 127840MB 200060MB 72220MB logical The same partition table, in MiB: Model: ATA WDC WD5000AAKX-2 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 476940MiB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 1.00MiB 110MiB 109MiB primary 2 110MiB 19183MiB 19073MiB primary 3 19183MiB 22044MiB 2861MiB primary 4 22044MiB 476940MiB 454896MiB extended lba 5 22045MiB 90923MiB 68878MiB logical 6 90924MiB 98076MiB 7152MiB logical 7 98076MiB 117149MiB 19073MiB logical 8 117150MiB 121918MiB 4768MiB logical 9 121918MiB 190792MiB 68874MiB logical The same partition table, in sectors: Model: ATA WDC WD5000AAKX-2 (scsi) Disk /dev/sdb: 976773168s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 1 2048s 225279s 223232s primary 2 225280s 39286783s 39061504s primary 3 39286784s 45146111s 5859328s primary 4 45146112s 976773119s 931627008s extended lba 5 45148160s 186210303s 141062144s logical 6 186212352s 200859647s 14647296s logical 7 200859649s 239921875s 39062227s logical 8 239923200s 249688063s 9764864s logical 9 249688065s 390742187s 141054123s logical Notice that partitions 7 and 9 begin on an odd-numbered sector! It appears that parted added 1 *twice* to the last sector in partition 6: 200859647 +1 = 200859648 ; and factor 200859648 200859648: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 3 11 743 So 200859648 would have been a good place to start the next partition. Similarly, for partition 9: factor 249688064 249688064: 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 47 1297 A curious feature of this bug is that parted returned 0 after reporting this mis-alignment, either with no alignment option, or with -a opt . However, it *does* produce an error return with -a min .