I have an old Dell Precision using MBR/BIOS (not UEFI). I have a number of old hard drives used with this computer earlier that no longer work. None boot, but some, look ok in disk management. All were stored in a drawer with anti-static film separating them. I finally decided to try reformatting and attempted to use EraseUs Partition Manager to reformat. I could not find reformat, but did see a link for "fixing" the bios. Bad choice, now the computer will not boot! The hard drive works fine in another T3500. Is it possible to resolve this issue?.
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Have you ever tried to reformat the old hard drive via DiskPart.exe tool? Press Win+R and input diskpart and hit on enter. In the elevated window, type list disk>select disk >clean> create partition primary. If it still cannot work, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard (the free version) to force format the hard drive or wipe the hard drive from BIOS. Hope you can solve it as expected.
bigger than 2 tb you have to use GUID partition table (GPT) when formatting.
I always use gparted live cd , you boot into a cd operating system and format what need, just make sure if over 2 tb and you want to see the whole disk look for the switch to switch to gpt fromating it is normally in mbr formating. There are youtube videos on how to use gparted live and what it looks like. You may or may not be able to check ntfs partitions with this.
Hope this helps a little. I would check your bios settings if the machine booted before and now does not. Try restore defaults and go from there.
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Posted March 8th, 2020 14:00
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