Should I use a data retrieval service or software to recover data ?

Question

Please pardon the length of this post.
Here's the setup for our office:
Computer 1:
10.4.8 OS X
1 GHZ PowerPC G4: silver grey tower, grey apple
1MB L3 Cache
256 MB DDR SDRAM
Computer 2:
10.4.8 OS X
Dual 450 MHZ PowerPC G4: blue grey tower, blue apple
256 MB SDRAM
Computer 3:
10.4.8 OS X
1 GHZ PowerPC G4 IMac Flat Screen:
256 MB DDR SDRAM
I have 2 LaCie Big Disk d2 Extremes daisy chained and connected to the IMac. We use the first to store all of our data to keep our local disks free. The second d2 is the backup to the first. The other 2 computers connect to the d2's via an ethernet hub. The d2's are each partitioned into 4 compartments.
A couple of days ago I started the system up when I got in in the morning, and the main d2 would not open. I ran disk utility, but it said that the drive was damaged beyond it's ability to repair. I ran DiskWarrior, and it gave me this message:
"The directory of disk 'G4' cannot be rebuilt. The disk was not modified. The original directory is too severely damaged. It appears another disk utility has erased critical directory information. (3004, 2176)."
I contacted Disk Warrior tech support and after a series of exchanges that had me send him dated extracted from the terminal function, he said this:
"It appears that the concatenated RAID inside your LaCie
drive has failed (your 500GB drive is actually 2 250GB
hard drives). That is why we only saw 2 partitions
on "disk3". A possible cause could be a failed bridge
in the case.
You may be looking at sending this drive to a data recovery service.
However, it is possible that we may be able to recover data
from the partitions that we CAN see. What we would be doing would cause no damage to your data
unless the hard drives were having a mechanical failure (ie, the
head crashed and was contacting the platters, similar to scratching
a record). But from what I've seen, I don't feel that is the case.
I believe the piece of hardware that 'bridges' the two drives to
make them act as one has failed. that's why we can only see data
about 1 of the 2 drives in the case.
We would only be attempting to gather data off the drive. Since
data recovery services sometimes charge for amount of data retrieved,
it's up to you how you want to proceed."
Most of the data from the past 5 years for our business stands at being lost. Only some of it had been properly backed up on the second drive, due to some back up software issues. I want to do whatever I can to retrieve all of, or at least some of the data. From what the Alsoft technician said, do you think that the data recovery software available to the consumer is going to be robust enough to retrieve at least the data from the one disk in the drive that is recognizable (there are 2 250gig disks in the d2X. Only one is responding at all). If so, do these Softwares further damage the disks? Or should I just send the drive to a data recovery service?
I'd like to try to extract some of it myself via over the counter retrieval software, but I don't know whether to trust these programs?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Peter McConnell
1 GHZ PowerPC G4 IMac Flat Screen   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   Posted

Answer 1

Peter
My 2 cents:
I have used FileSalvage
http://www.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?mainpage=product_info&productsid=1
to recover files from damaged disks. It works as advertised, within limits. Some files may be too damaged to recover. More importantly yo get to scan the disk before actually recovering, and it will give you a list of what it thinks it can recover.
My experience was that it recovered approx 85% of the data.
YMMV but they do have a trial.
Regards
TD