How can I recover files from an hard disk that DiskUtility cannot rapair?

Question

When I push the power button of my PowerBook, while the computer is rebooting and you see the gray screen with the apple, the black screen appears saying that I have to restart the computer!
I have connected the Power Book to another Mac BookPro 2.33Ghz, intel Core Duo 2G RAM via firewire.
In the Mac bookPro desktop I cannot see the HD, and disk utility indicates this problem:
+Verify and Repair disk “Macintosh HD”+
+Invalid Volume Header+
+Checking HFS Plus volume.+
+Checking Extents Overflow file.+
+Checking Catalog file.+
+Invalid node structure+
+Volume check failed.+
+Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit+
+1 HFS volume checked+
+ 1 volume could not be repaired because of an error+
+and then:+
+Disk Utility stopped repairing “Macintosh HD” because the following error was encountered:+
+The underlying task reported failure on exit.+
Of course, I didn't try to format it, because the HD contains data that I don't want to lose.
I tried "Data Rescue II", and I can see and scan the HD, but it seems that I can only recover deleted files...
Any suggestions on how to repair the HD without losing the files?
Or a software suggestion that at least lets me first recover the files. If I recover the files, then I will try to reformat the HD.
Ciao!
beppe

Answer 1

Before giving up I would try Alsoft Disk Warrior which may be able to fix the problem:
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html
If this doesn't work out you can usually recover most of your files with Prosoft's Data Rescue II:
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php
Message was edited by: Zlig