Repair Utilities vs. Data Recovery Software..?

Hi there,

I'm wondering if someone can give me some guidance on what sort of software I should be looking into to recover data from my external hard drive. Humor me, I've never bought software for this sort of problem before..

What are the differences between something like Disk Warrior and something like Ease US? My external hard drive can't be repaired by disk utility, but I ran a trial version of Ease US and it was showing recovered photos. Is one of these programs preferable over the other for this kind of problem?

Any guidance would be great, thanks in advance

Disk Warrior is more likely to be useful a few times a year, so I recommend that.
Easeus looks useful if you forget to erase/format a drive for Mac native HFS+.
What error message(s) did Disk Utility give?

Take a look at the screenshot attached of the repair that Disk Utility attempted - do you have any insight on this? Do you think Disk Warrior be useful for this kind of problem?

Whilst personally use DiskWarrior the thing is it costs $99 and for that amount you can purchase a new hard drive. The drive may be cactus.

I've never had a hard drive that messed up! Except ones which didn't respond at all.
I "think" Disk Warrior will work, but can't guarantee it.

Personally, I would use recovery software to try and copy the files you need from that drive. Even if you should repair that drive it will only be temporary and likely fail again. As Harry pointed out, Disk Warrior is expensive but if those files (photos) are important to you, then it would be worth it.

There is also "Data Rescue 3" and "Disk Drill" which can recover files from a damaged drive. Both are about the same price as Disk Warrior.

I second Data Rescue. It has saved my bacon more than once.