cgsecurity.org

so I just used mkfs.ext2 on my 8TB harddrive where I save all my important files, and noticed it too late

I assume none of the files were overwritten, but I noticed my mistake quite late, so the fileystem should be completely destroyed

how are my chances of recovering my files or better restoring the filesystem? is there any hope?

You can use TestDisk, Advanced, Boot, BackupBS to restore the NTFS boot sector.
You should be able to access most of your file after that but when an ext2/3/4 filesystem is formated, backup superblock are written a little bit everywhere and they have overwritten data, so some of the recovered files will be corrupted.

backup superblock are written a little bit everywhere and they have overwritten data, so some of the recovered files will be corrupted

thats ok, as long as i approximately get back the old folder structure, i can redownload the corrupt files,



i just scanned using another program, and it found almost all files
i could alraedy recover my important documents

im gonna use testdisk now

my problem is i do not have a separate 8TB drive (the one i mkfs'd is 8TB)

do I need to buy an extra drive to repair/save it?

To repair the NTFS boot sector, no need of another disk.