GParted liveCD - version differences

Good day everybody.
Thank you for providing the program and even more for reading all the (flooding) messages regarding its operation.
I ran across an issue that I believe it is worth sharing.
In all cases mentioned below I used the liveCD, i486 version of the program.
-The problem: GParted 0.17.0-4 refuses to recognise a hard disk (dev/sda), working endlessly and giving the message “searching /dev/sda partitions” at the status line. The rest of the liveCD environment works fine, you can switch off the machine from the provided menu.
-The peculiar thing: The problem exists with Gparted 0.17.0-4 (where I noticed it first) and persists on GParted 0.18.0-1. Nevertheless, the problem is not present on version 0.14.1-6. Using the latter version I can access and operate on the disk. (These are the versions I checked.)

The disk in question comes from a Dell notebook and using the GParted 0.18.0-1 liveCD (on which GParted stalls and does not recognise the disk), and from a command prompt, I can obtain the following information:
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user@debian:~$ sudo fdisk –l -u
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160040803840 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312579695 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9b948cd7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63      224909      112423+  de  Dell Utility
/dev/sda2   *      225280   307333119   153553920    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4       307333120   312578047     2622464    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5       307335168   312578047     2621440   dd  Unknown
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and
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user@debian:~$ sudo parted /dev/sda unit s print
Model: ATA ST9160821AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 312579695s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start       End         Size        Type      File system  Flags
1      63s         224909s     224847s     primary   fat16        diag
2      225280s     307333119s  307107840s  primary   ntfs         boot
4      307333120s  312578047s  5244928s    extended               lba
5      307335168s  312578047s  5242880s    logical   fat32
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I hope that all these are clear.
Thank you for all your actions and efforts.

PS
The problem is not machine specific. I connected the disk to a desktop machine and I obtained exactly the same behavioural differences between the 0.14.1-6 and the later versions.