We could say try this and try that but it would all be useless, if one really wants to recover this thing, would need to investigate it deeply on sector level in order to set up an idea of what's going on.
Giving any 'tips' without seeing the structures would be very unprofessional imo. Guiding somebody who has no insight with file systems is pretty much harder than doing the job.
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and avoid the need for data recovery...?
it seems you are right in the middle of it :s
To be on the safe side, the first thing is to image it without trying to mount.
If you ever try to mount it, do it read-only.
I would start from the beginning, finding out what FS is on it, checking the superblock, the group descriptors if it's EXT, if they are in order, etc, but really, there are quite some questions open.
pepe