I'm trying to install Slackware 10.1 on the main system in my signature below but I can't get it to partition. when i type fdisk i get this error message:

You will not be able to write the partition table.
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table nor Sun, Sgal, or OSR disk label.
Building a new DOS Label. Changes will remain in memory,
until you decide to write them. After that of course the previous
content won't be recoverable.

Warning: invalid flag 0x000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)


when i try to create a new partition it only shows starting on 1 and ending at 80 cylinders or whatever. I previously had/have windows xp pro on an ntfs partition but I've deleted that using many methods making sure of it.. delpart.exe, data lifeguard, etc etc etc and fdisk shows no partitions so what's the problem?

I'm booting up with sata.i (using a western digital raptor) and this is just becoming a big pain in the ass, but i dont want to give up!

Does Slack support this SATA drive? I know SATA support in many distros is sketchy at best (as with Windows)

I had (and still have) the same problem with my maxtordisk. I "solved" it by simply using cfdisk instead of fdisk.

when i use cfdisk it says i dont have permission to write to disk, and it only shows approximately 650mb available to work with.... since last night i've used zero-write on my harddrive so i know there can't be any existing ntfs partition taking up space but i still get the same errors when using fdisk, and i still dont have the space im supposed to have. any input?

ahhh i resolved this. i should have been typing fdisk /dev/sda thank you for your time!