Re: whole disk unallocated??? gparted LIES!!!
Why did this work?
By deleting the invalid partition, this enabled the libparted library to read the partition table and provide the information to GParted. Otherwise libparted passes the error to GParted and no further partition editing is permitted.
i read in another post where you used dd to fix someone else's similar problem, and you asked whether the "align to cylinders" was checked. is this important?
It depends on what the problem was exactly. There used to be some problems with GParted needlessly moving the start of a partition when "align to cylinders" was checked. This problem was fixed quite a while ago and no longer applies.
Current operating systems do not have to be aligned to cylinders to work. This was not the case back in the days of MS-DOS. So for most partitioning needs, I recommend using "align to MiB".
i've found that with a complex partitioning scheme, the only way to end up without random 1-2Mb unallocated areas in between partitions is to have it align to none. is this bad?
When using "align to none", GParted will not guarantee to reserve space for items such as the Master Boot Record, or the Extended Boot Record. As such I recommend you use "Align to MiB".
i'm assuming fdisk aligned me to sectors or cylinders? it didn't like that my partitions didn't end on a cylinder boundary, or at least found it worth mentioning.
It depends on which version of fdisk you used, and which command line parameters were passed. Today's operating systems do not need to be aligned to cylinders. I believe that the warning message has been moved from recent versions of fdisk.
next, when doing a lot of rearranging of partitions, would it be recommended to do one operation at a time, rather than, for example, resize, move, resize another, move another, etc.etc... ?
Performing one operation at a time is the most cautious way to proceed. This is more important with NTFS file systems, because only Windows knows how to properly repair the file system after a change. With other file systems this is not important.
I know i'm asking a lot and im sorry. could you recommend some reading for me that may answer these questions?
The documentation on the GParted site is very useful. You will find answers to your alignment questions in the GParted Manual. The FAQ is helpful too.