Data recovery house tainted my Mac-only files: help!

Question

I sent a failed ext. FW drive (clicking sound, wouldn’t mount) to a fairly-well-known data recovery specialist that advertised PC and Mac formats. The drive contained numerous Mac-only files, including Sound Designer II audio files (.sd2), Final Cut Pro (.fcp), and Digital Performer files (native, no suffix), to name a few.
After said specialist started working on the drive, it became frighteningly apparent that they were not up to speed on Mac systems. To make a long story short, after a couple of weeks I received a hard drive formatted FAT32, and every Mac-only file showed up in Finder as a Unix Executable file.
My first thought was they were using Windows-based software and had corrupted all my Mac-only files beyond repair. Forging ahead and knowing nothing about scripts, I used a 3rd party program called Super Get Info and was able to change the Type and Author of the Digital Performer files, and got them to open. So far, so good. But changing the Type and Author of the .sd2 files didn’t yield the same results; Finder sees the type, size, etc. but no audio program (DP, Peak, Jam) will open them.
Thinking I was screwed, I opened another project in DP that contained audio files which were still recognized in Finder as Unix Executables, and they played! I have no idea why this works---no other program will open them independently---but it shows if I can get an app to recognize them, they are still valid files.
Is there a way to dig deeper, besides just changing the Type and Author, to essentially get back all the header(?) information that was originally there in the .sd2 files (before the "data recovery") so an audio program can see that these are indeed valid files and legit to operate on? Something in Developer Tools, 3rd party, etc.?
Thanks,
Roger
G5 2.3gHz Dual Power Core   Mac OS X (10.4.4)   2.5 GB RAM, multiple FW drives
G5 2.3gHz Dual Power Core   Mac OS X (10.4.4)   2.5 GB RAM, multiple FW drives

Answer 1

Extern firewire drives often come formatted as FAT32 - so unless you reformatted it yourself that may have been the way it was. When Mactintosh files are saved to a FAT32 file system, the resource information is written to a file with a ._ added to the front of the file name. If you go to a terminal window and cd to your extern drive, "ls -A" will show if the resource information is there. For a file call "file.s2d", you should see a hidden file call "._file.s2d". Some utilites have trouble creating resource forks on FAT32 drives - so your utility may not be working. Try moving some of your files back to your main drive and correct the Creator and file type there - may be that will work.