Testdisk is litlle weird of usage at first but when you got it, it’s very powerfull. At least try and learn on the safe way before to pay !
To guide you a little
1/ use the Live EndeavourOS Live Iso Testdisk is already on it…version 7.1
2/ If your drive to clone is 250Go you need a free space of 250Go for the clone image to save on it…
3/ When clone image is done open Testdisk and try everything you want on it
4/ if you broke your clone image redo the step to 1/ then there is no risk to bring your drive to computer shop in last chance !
Sorry Morse, forgot to thank you earlier for your suggestion. Especially as Photo rec could be installed onto my windows partition. However, as I said I don’t have another 500GB-1TB hard drive lying around. So I think it’s better to put that money towards data recovery then a drive that I wouldn’t be using again other than for cloning purposes. Although, if I did have a drive around I would look into data recovery so I could do it, but I dont… So will be taking my PC into the computer shop
yes but it doesn’t work on raw data like Testdisk does, you wouldn’t get the same recover at all that’s why I told Photorec is faster and easier for photos…When it’s about recover all data on a drive that’s Testdisk you need.
A Seagate 1To HDD is about 45€, after it’s up to You to decide what is the best way for you to recover it… good luck
Okay so massive thank you (again) to everyone for your contributions!! This forum really is a community of friendly and helpful people. And even though I would’ve liked my first post to not have been "Help I reformatted my hard drive!" I do appreciate all your contributions and if the data recovery option is too expensive. I’ll just forget about windoze and use my HDD for Linux and endeavour to get all my games up and running on there
Hi Xircon, that’s true. But I feel it would be a bit redundant for me to remove the current windows install to then put another one back one. I could, however halve the hard drive again, so windows steam games on one half and Linux on the other.
Also, I’ve just came back from the computer shop and they’re looking into recovering the drive. If they manage to rebuild it, it will be £30 which is not as bad as $70. If they can’t recover it they’ll be no charge and I’ll just use the drive for Linux. So I guess we’ll just see. Either way it’s a lesson learnt I was only reinstalling so I could make my /root and /home partitions a bit larger. I’ll be more careful next time with the partitioning.
Thanks that makes me feel a bit better. To be fair this is the first time I’ve had to have my PC repaired because of me making a mistake. And it could’ve been a lot worse luckily I also have back up of my games as well. So if the partition can’t be recovered I’ll be able to get my saves back thanks to backup and steam cloud. My main worry is struggling to get games running on steamplay. I’m sure it will all work out in the end though
You could re-install all your documents and apps/games from your external backup drive, couldn’t you? Obviously, nobody in 2020 fails to keep a backup copy of their important stuff, do they? Do they?
Oh yes, i’m sure that we’ve all been there in some way shape or form!
You’re very lucky that it’s just games, and not something that you really can’t re-download…
Learn as a habbit to backup precious stuff at least once in 6 month
Always plan ahead how to get back and running in case of possible failures
In Linux it is pretty easy!
Believe me - once you get the idea, it will work very easy!
Unless you play some very specific online games (there is always a way, but it requires some knowledge)
Oh btw, “But can it run Crysis?!” - yes, just played it
Here’s my article about software Ray Tracing with reshade on LInux, to get you idea of how advanced you can go this days:
I’m also writing some very easy article now, on how to get started with Wine / Steam and doesn’t feel pain of learning (with Steam for the most part it’s just Plug & Play now), so it would be our little gaming hub where you can find all the terms, resources in one place and get some help or share exciting new information right here in our community!
Hahaha Its 2020 of course I have backups!! And in all honesty I don’t really use my desktop for documents I literally only use it for gaming. I use one of my sisters’ laptops if I need to create documents, do uni work etc or browse the internet. And as I was single booting Linux on both of them I backed up all our data on those laptops into Google drive and on several memory sticks before installing EOS and elementary. So all our photos, important documents etc are safe. I also have physical backups of some of my games and the others are in the cloud.
I just didn’t want to have to re-format my desktop hard drive, reinstall my games then reformat the other half of the drive for linux again. Hence my original questions about data recovery.
I used testdisk in 2007 - it recovers everything - including corrupted files across deleted/unformatted areas of the disk (I had a lot of damaged pictures) which I’m sure are irrepairable due to having been overwritten.
It’s good, but will take a good while to run it’s course.
For Steam Games, I’d have thought it better/easier to restore them by downloading (as they’re already paid).
That’s great, I really like the idea of an EOS gaming hub. I know Eloquin has done a great guide for installing Steam. I also like intelligent gaming on YouTube as a good resource and the gaming on Linux subreddit.
Before doing the reintall I did install steamplay and proton tricks and was quite happily playing through Assassins Creed Origins. However, I know other games e.g Assassins Creed Odyssey can be a bit tricky to play according to proton DB. Which is why I wanted my games in the windows partition back as a backup.
I’ll keep my eye in the gaming section though for more of your articles. Linux gamers aren’t as common as windows gamers and I think more people would move to Linux if they knew how much more accessible gaming on Linux is pthanks to Lutris, steamplay, protontricks etc
Not an option I’m afraid. Steam games strongly dislike trying to run on an NTFS formatted drive in Linux. This had me stumped for months until I sat and had a think about it one day, then it dawned on me to try using ext4 instead. I went from having no working Steam games, to most of my 1000+ catalogue working via Steam Play without issue
I reckon it’s something to do with the need to run through the NTFS driver that causes Steam games to bomb out immediately on launch (regardless of game), but on Ext4 they work perfectly.
If you want to share a library between Linux and Windows, personally I’d recommend exFat, as it has native support in both OS’s.
Mind you very few of them get played because I play so much damned World of Warcraft
Edit: It’s currently standing at 1,140 games. Mind you I do have a Humble Bundle subscription which gets me another 10 games every month for $12, so well worth it
This is why I dual boot Windows 10 and Endeavour. I have steam on both OS. Games that do not run well on Proton/Wine, goes on my Windows 10 partition. Games that run well or native on Linux, go on Endeavour. I have retroarch for emulation and Launchbox for game management on windows because there seems to be random issues on Arch based systems RetroArch, and I’ve not found a suitable replacement on Linux for Launchbox. I’m plan on toying around with RetroArch and Standalone emulators on Endeavour, I want to see if they can read ROMs that are located on NTFS file directory, mainly for Xbox, PlayStation 3 consoles and newer.
Confidence in data recovery through is another matter.
I do appreciate all your contributions and if the data recovery option is too expensive. I’ll just forget about windoze and use my HDD for Linux and endeavour to get all my games up and running on there 
I was only reinstalling so I could make my /root and /home partitions a bit larger. I’ll be more careful next time with the partitioning.
Its 2020 of course I have backups!! 
And in all honesty I don’t really use my desktop for documents I literally only use it for gaming. I use one of my sisters’ laptops if I need to create documents, do uni work etc or browse the internet. And as I was single booting Linux on both of them I backed up all our data on those laptops into Google drive and on several memory sticks before installing EOS and elementary. So all our photos, important documents etc are safe. I also have physical backups of some of my games and the others are in the cloud.
