Help - Time Machine, Data Rescue 3, and no direction home

Hi, thanks for reading/helping. I've been looking for a while to find a solution to my particular issues, but haven't come across a similar one:

1) How can I convert an "InProgress" TM backup to a useable full backup, especially if it has complete backups under the last, partial one? (Or just get past the "InProgress" part?)

2) How can I combine or integrate scans from DR3 [with/without the TM data] to recreate a lost drive?

Details:
A few months ago I was performing a time machine backup of my MacBook HD and noticed that it was running extremely slow. Then I ran into an error that stopped the backup. To make a long story short (and skip many embarrassing bits), I concluded that the problem was my backup G-Drive, which was getting fairly old and had not been reformatted in ages.

I erased the G-Drive TM volume in Disk Utility (using "Don't Erase Data" setting), thinking that I would start anew with a whole, fresh backup. I started this and got the same error at the same point.

Can you guess the punchline? That's right - The G-Drive was fine. It was the MB HD that was failing. (@#%^&-ing Seagate... the thing was less than a year old!) I immediately tried backing up onto a WD drive and recovered about half of the data before the "ticking" sound started and I knew that the MB HD was a goner. Even DriveSavers put a fork in it. I was really bummed since I thought I lost the HD data and the TM data.

Recently I finally got the nerve back to try a recovery. I have Data Rescue 3, so I began scanning both backups for recoverable files, both "erased" and present ones on the G-Drive and regular ones on the WD. I now have a good amount of the files back between them, but I have no idea about all data.

The troublesome part is that all the data is scattered between folders in the TM "InProgress" file, and in different scans performed by DR3. Even the TM folders I have access to don't indicate where I can find/recreate the drive to the best useable state. [See attachment.] Any ideas where to go from here?

Thanks again if you read through this.

 

Another thing - DR3 did a Deep Scan that came up with a mind-numbing number of files that it projects will fill 3.6 TB of space. All from a 250GB drive....

Do you have a free 3.6TB? Well at the moment I don't.

Any strategies for limiting the selected files without leaving out any essentials? And in any particular order? I was hoping to re-create the HD on a partition, if at all possible.

Thx