I booted a machine from the SL 6.1 install DVD to install upon an 
unformatted drive that appeared as /dev/sde.  The drive is an advanced 
format Western Digital unit.

The install failed at the partitioning format that I did as a custom 
format.  Unfortunately, there was no way to capture the detailed message 
-- I tried scp but the local network security configuration prevented 
this from working.

After the failure, I rebooted the machine and used fdisk /dev/sde to 
find out what I could.

The result is:

[root@jb344 ykarant]# fdisk /dev/sde

The device presents a logical sector size that is smaller than
the physical sector size. Aligning to a physical sector (or optimal
I/O) size boundary is recommended, or performance may be impacted.

WARNING: DOS-compatible mode is deprecated. It's strongly recommended to
          switch off the mode (command 'c') and change display units to
          sectors (command 'u').

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sde: 1500.3 GB, 1500301910016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 182401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000656df

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sde1               1        1275    10240000   83  Linux
/dev/sde2            1275      103261   819200000   83  Linux

One may note that the 4096 bytes that the disk internally uses is 
observed as a physical sector size, but there is an attempt to use a 512 
byte logical sector size.
I need to force the formatting to use a 4096 byte logical and physical 
sector size.
I did use a custom partitioning during the failed install.

Evidently, this cannot be done using the GUI installation from the 
installation DVD.
Can I do it from my existing OS and then proceeding to install without 
modifying the partitions I would layout?

Yasha Karant