KDE Partition Manager reports different sector count

Help
1

For a 1TB disk connected over SATA, KDE Partition Manager reports that it has 1953520065 sectors. However, both GParted and fdisk report that it has 1953525168 sectors. Why is there a difference? I don’t know enough about storage to guess whether it’s a bug or some deeper detail.

I get the same discrepancy on 3 different 1TB drives:

  • A Crucial SSD
  • A Western Digital HDD
  • A Seagate HDD

Versions:

  • OS: Debian 12.8.0 (kernel 6.1.0-28-amd64)
  • KDE Partition Manager: 22.12.3
  • GParted: 1.3.1
  • fdisk from util-linux 2.38.1
2

Hi! Forewarning, I’m no expert on disks by any means, but I thought I’d give DuckDuckGo-ing the numerical difference in those sector counts a try, and I think I stumbled on a lead: linux - real number of sectors on HDD - Super User

Sounds like it’s related to the alignment of your partitions’ addresses to multiples of its physical sector size - not ruling out some possible bug in KDE Partition Manager, but it might also be worth checking things like DiskBlockAlignment - Debian Wiki ?

3

Good find! Now we have a plausible reason for the difference :slight_smile: