I just got a hard disk from my friend. Since it's only 160GB, I assume it's a pretty old one. Now I'm going to format it and make it a fresh hard disk through raspberry pi. But I notice the primary partition starts from 1049kB:
root@raspberrypi:/dev# parted
GNU Parted 3.2
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print free
Model: External USB 3.0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 160GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
32.3kB 1049kB 1016kB Free Space
1 1049kB 160GB 160GB primary
When I check the disk partition table (cfdisk /dev/sda), it only shows sda1 and doesn't show the free space.
How can I merge the primary with the free space? I tried deleting the partition and recreating a new one. But it failed and remained unchanged.
And just curious... why does the free space start at 32.3kB? I've seen this number in many hard disks but just couldn't find an answer yet.