Data Recovery on External Drives

I have an external LaCie 200GB FireWire 400 drive, the F.A. Porsche one. While unmounting it before a trip I was in a hurry and unplugged the FireWire cable too soon and it came up with the customary message informing me as such. I paid it no mind as I was in a hurry and I'd done it once or twice before on accident and had suffered no wrath.
Anyway when I got home this evening I went to plug it in and found the drive unresponsive. I got a message saying I couldn't mount the volume but could initialise it in Disk Utility, so I did. The drive was showing but the volume with my data was gone, or rather it was showing up as "disk1s3" instead of "Rei" as it is named.
I tried the following steps to recover my data:
1. Disk Utility: I tried to repair the volume. I received an error saying it could not be done.
2. TechTool Pro: I did the drive test and it came back as having passed.
3. TechTool Pro: I tested the volume, found that the index was corrupted. Made sense.
4. DiskWarrior: I tried to recover it with DiskWarrior. During the recovering process the program became unresponsive and I got the beach ball of doom. After pressing AppleAltEsc I found the program was not responding and highlighted in red. I force-quit the application. I tried again and it proceeded to do the exact same thing. This time I noticed a message stating something along the lines of performance being slowed due to a drive malfunction. I was, once again, forced to force-quit the program.
5. DataRescue II: I attempted to use DataRescue II to see if I could at least view the files and transfer them off the drive and back them up to DVD so I could format the drive and reload all my data. Though it is visible to Disk Utility, DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro it is not, however, visible to DataRescue II.
6. TechTool Pro: I am now having TT P attempt to recover the data. I'm planning on letting it run into the night and hope in the morning it will be fine.
If anyone has any more recommendations on what I can do let me know. I can afford to buy another external to transfer all of my data onto that if I can access it long enough to pull it all off, but I need a program that can at least see the files to grab them.

Hi, Doug.
By not ejecting the drive before disconnecting it, the partition map was corrupted. Short of professional data recovery, you've covered everything and then some in my "Data Recovery" FAQ. If DR-II and TTP can't recover the data, then you're left with professional data recovery, per my FAQ.
I presume you don't have backups of the contents on the LaCie. After you recover from this incident, I suggest you implement a comprehensive Backup and Recovery solution addressing all of your drives. For advice on the backup and recovery solution I employ, see my "Backup and Recovery" FAQ.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X
Note: The information provided in the link(s) above is freely available. However, because I own The X Lab™, a commercial Web site to which some of these links point, the Apple Discussions Terms of Use require I include the following disclosure statement with this post:
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

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1.
If you can boot, try using a linux liveCD like systemrescue. Use a flash drive to copy everything to the flash drive.
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http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec (non-commercial; PhotoRec)
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http://www.antrix.net/journal/techtalk/reiserfs_data_recovery_howto.html (ReiserFS)
http://linuxshellaccount.blogspot.com/2008/08/recovering-deleted-files-by-inode.html (Recovering Deleted Files By Inode Number In Linux And Unix)
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/397719-repair-a-linux-file-system-and-reclaim-deleted-files (Reclaim Deleted Files and Repair Filesystems on Linux; 1/25/11)
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Hi @Karlo12333 ,
Welcome to the HP Forums!
It is a great place to find answers and information!
For you to have the best experience in the HP forum I would like to direct your attention to the HP Forums Guide Learn How to Post and More
Unfortunately coping the partition does not work. I don't thing you will be able to create recovery media from the copied partition on the external but if you have not yet created recovery disk you can give it a try.
If you cannot create the recovery media you will need to contact HP support to obtain a recovery kit.
Please call our technical support at 800 474 6836. If you live outside the US/Canada Region, please click the link below to get a support number for your region.
World Wide Phone Support
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Sparkles1
I work on behalf of HP
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Data Recovery on External Drives

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