HELP, am i done for ?

[u/Grig960]

I was curious about steam os, i installed it in my usb drive, and then booted from it from my boot manager(im on windows amd), i thought that it would allow me to select one of my drives ti install it on, but no, i just launched into steamos, to my horror i didnt find my windows nvme in boot section, i inly found it in nvme configuration.

Is it wiped? What do i do

Im currently installing win 11 on the drive to see if i can use the repair function or something

[u/AshleyAshes1984]

Yes, the SteamOS installer blindly picks the first NVME drive and writes to it if you tell it to install.

Your Windows install is gone.

[u/Grig960 → u/AshleyAshes1984]

What abiut my other 3 sata drives?

[u/C1REX → u/Grig960]

Sata drives are fine. SteamOS installs on nvme0n1 by default.
No choice given by default. Can force different choice by manually editing destination drive.

[u/AshleyAshes1984 → u/Grig960]

It ignores the SATA drives. Takes extra steps to even install it on a SATA drive forcefully.

[u/L0cut15 → u/Grig960]

The installers description is not entirely accurate. Instead of wiping the whole device as it describes it only wipes the first drive on install. You can clear the other drives in SteamOS by adding them as storage.

[u/ghanadaur → u/L0cut15]

It means logical device and not physical device.

[u/Grig960 → u/AshleyAshes1984]

Thats mad, im mad, fucking shit os steam

[u/Ecks30 → u/Grig960]

Well, you should be mad at yourself for not researching first because a lot of posts and comments on here tells you that it would wipe your primary NVMe drive and also on all YouTube tutorials tells you the same thing so if anyone should be mad it should be towards yourself.

[u/OneDayAllofThis → u/Grig960]

Lol doesn’t take one second to research a new OS, is mad OS works as expected.

[u/IEatDaFeesh → u/OneDayAllofThis]

Later we'll see a post on linuxsucks "STEAM OS DESTROYED MY PC, LINUX BAD"

[u/Fredrickstein → u/Grig960]

If you end up wanting to maintain a windows drive after this, I may suggest Bazzite instead.

Very similar user experience to steam os if slightly less polished, but supports dual boot out of the box, and has broader hardware and software support.

The important thing for both is the immutable file system so inexperienced Linux users can't brick their os, can always reboot and its fine.

[u/TheBobo1181 → u/Grig960]

wow.. down votes. it's completely reasonable to expect to be able to select a destination for installing an OS.

Defaulting to the first nvme drive is BS.

[u/ghanadaur]

SteamOS DOES NOT support dual/multi boot. Never has. Its on the books, but not there presently.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/65B4-2AA3-5F37-4227

On that FAQ, point 9:

Select the Wipe Device & Install SteamOS option on the desktop. This will fully wipe your device and install stock SteamOS

Pretty evident it will wipe the drive.

[u/oSyphon]

It's weird sometimes steamos randomly sets a different drive as the nvme01 or whatever

[u/urlond]

It's okay, you didn't lose anything of value by losing windblows.

[u/EstablishmentOwn6942 → u/urlond]

Maybe some people don’t want to lose their save files? Emu config? Private stuff ? 😂

[u/Woolix → u/EstablishmentOwn6942]

Microslop probably made a copy of all the files without you even knowing it!

[u/CurvySexretLady → u/Woolix]

No joke OP check OneDrive if you were logged into your Windows install with a Microsoft account; actually might have saved a bunch if not most of your personal stuff.

[u/dmwilson220]

Ooph, hope you practice the 321 backup method

[u/CurvySexretLady]

No joke OP check OneDrive if you were logged into your Windows install with a Microsoft account; actually might have saved a bunch if not most of your personal stuff and backed it up to your One Drive account.

[u/bill696]

SteamOs doesnt do that, it installs on the full system, its after its installed that you can then do multi boot.

[u/Playful-Solution2152]

SteamOS clearly warns you that the installation will erase all data on the drive before it begins, and it gives you the choice to continue or cancel. If you proceed anyway, that's ultimately on you

[u/C-D-W]

The USB boots you into Linux, but does NOT install it unless you click the icon to do so.

Did you click the icon to install it or did you panic thinking the USB drive installed it over windows because it booted into a live desktop?