FOSS partition recovery software that isn't Testdisk?

For the last little bit, I've been using a Seagate SRD00F2 3TB 'Expansion' drive to house all my ripped/encoded DVDs and Steam/GOG Backups of any large games. Friday this stopped working, the drive wouldn't power on, the disk would spin up when plugged in, and it wasn't recognized in Windows or Mint. After working on it for the weekend, using Testdisk and a couple other 'free' utilities(Easeus, Active@, iCare, Find and Mount, Pandora), I've reached an impasse.

Teskdisk can't seem to recover the partition completely, though it can see the partition and all the files, and it has labeled the drive as 'NTFS', it can't actually get the drive to a state where I can mount it. I've tried a number of trial programs, and I'm sitting here about to bite the bullet on a $70 purchase for Minitool Power Data Recovery, which can see all the files, sizes/etc and preview image files.

Before I do that though, I thought I'd throw the question out there of has anyone had any experience recovering a damaged hard drive partition, or data recovery software in general? If anyone has any advice, or experience to lend, I'd love to hear from you

System rescue CD, based on gentoo, just run test disk under it potentially, unless you were unable to move files at all using test disk in which case you're probably just screwed and should pony up for a data recovery service if your data is important

turns out mine just had a corrupt file system that couldn't be repaired

You can just use Rufus to make a mountable USB

You could also try the Gparted data recovery option while you're in system rescue
https://www.system-rescue-cd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

how to mount a USB drive to move the files to it
https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/system-rescue-cd-testdisk-how-to-get-data-to-external-storage-device/94032

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I did NOT know I could copy files over with Testdisk!

I was afraid to try any of the options, I just copied a file over and it worked no problem! I don't want to get my hopes up, but right now it looks like you just saved me $70!

Well ya know, if you were gunna spend 70 bucks anyways xcom 2 just came out....lol

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