[gentoo-user] Resizing ntfs creates a hidden partition

[Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com>]

Hi All,

I am resizing a Windows partition to get some space for Gentoo.  I
noticed that when gparted finished and I rebooted the machine there is
a blank unallocated space in front of the Windows 7 partition, shown
below as 6.33MB:

===================================================
                         cfdisk (util-linux-ng 2.16.1)

                              Disk Drive: /dev/sda
                       Size: 500107862016 bytes, 500.1 GB
             Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 60801

    Name        Flags      Part Type  FS Type          [Label]        Size (MB)
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    sda1                    Primary   Dell Utility                        41.13
    sda2        Boot        Primary   NTFS             []              15728.64*
                            Pri/Log   Free Space                           6.33*
    sda3                    Primary   NTFS             []              52426.47*
                            Pri/Log   Free Space                      431902.70*

===================================================

Also, when I used gparted to create a new extended partition over the
431G free space at the end of the disk I ended up with a similar small
unallocated space in front of it.  This is something I have observed
happening recently on 3 laptops that I have worked on, i.e. resizing
or creating a new partition inevitably creates a small blank partition
in front of it.

Looking at the sectors table I see this:
===================================================
Partition Table for /dev/sda

               First       Last
 # Type       Sector      Sector   Offset    Length   Filesystem Type (ID) Flag
-- ------- ----------- ----------- ------ ----------- -------------------- ----
 1 Primary           0       80324     63       80325 Dell Utility (DE)    None
 2 Primary       80325    30800324*     0    30720000*HPFS/NTFS (07)       Boot
   Pri/Log    30800325*   30812669      0       12345*Free Space           None
 3 Primary    30812670   133208104*     0   102395435*HPFS/NTFS (07)       None
   Pri/Log   133208105*  976768064      0   843559960*Free Space           None
===================================================

I am not sure what the asterisks are for after the last sector on the
second and third partitions.

Could this empty space jump be related to gparted somehow shifting the
start of a partition to make it align with a particular sector as per
previous thread on the 4k sector topic?

Should I do anything about it, or just run with it and let gparted
align what it wants to align as part of the partitioning process?
-- 
Regards,
Mick