Maxtor 120GB failed in Lyksys NAS, Serious data loss

[SDX]

I am in the Military currently on deployment in Iraq in support of OIF. My unit has a medium size network which I manage. Attached to this network is Linksys EFG120 NAS which we use to store all of our mission products. The NAS has two disks :
Disk 1 : Maxtor DiamondMax Pro 9 120GB
Disk 2 : Maxtor 80GB
Afew days ago we experienced problems accessing the NAS on Disk 1 so I shut it down and cleaned the system out with compressed air. A couple of hours later I noticed the same lag so I took immediate action to backup our critical files, unfortunately it was too late!While transfering one of the larger folders to disk2 we lost power to the building and the UPS failed. Once we got power back I tried to continue where I left off but kept on getting I/O errors everytime I tried to copy a folder. I managed to pull of about 70% of what we had on Disk 1 before it failed completely. Disk 2 was not affected.
The disk soon became inaccessible from the NAS which read it as "UNFORMATTED". I removed the Hard drive and placed it in an External HD case to see if I could access it from my computer, still no luck, the system recognised that there was something attached to the usb port but did not see the Hard Drive.
Next step : the NAS does a High level format which creates two partitions, the MBR and the file system which is EXT3. I used both "ext2fsd" and "Paragon Mount everything" to read the partition but all scans came up with 0 files and 0 Directories "UNFORMATTED" and detects bad sectors. The MBR was not errased so I am confused at this point.
I don't know what else to do.
I can not send the disk in for repair because its classified and there are some files which I have to retreive !
Does anyone out there have any ideas ?

Regards from the front line..
SDX ( I wanna go home!!!!!!! lol )

 

[itman42]

I had a cutomer of mine (Financial institution) who called me up to tell me that her pc would not boot up! I brought the pc home and checked out the drive. No partition, nothing. Just like it had never contained anything. Yet the drive seemed to be funtioning. As payroll and a great many other things use to be on it, telling her it was all gone was not an option !! The last backup performed was a week before the failure. I frantically checked around and fell on a web site (

http://www.partition-recovery.com)

. I purchased it for around 50.00 cdn 29.99 US. I must say I was impressed. I recovered about 90% of all the data and copied it to a new fresh installed os drive. The other 10% I didn't care as it was OS related. As I was performing this task she called to tell me her husband's computer drive had failed. I hope this helps you out. Worked miracles for me.

 

[SDX]

Re :itman42
Thanks I'll take a look at the website.

Update :
I took the Hard drive to a forensic recovery team and it failed 5 minutes into the recovery.They were unable to recover any of the data. The drive has since been evaced to a third recovery team. I sent the error code out to Maxtor tech support and their response was that the drive has failed and is irrecoverable......so I will just have to wait and see.

Thx
SDX