Losing data on ext3 is a bit odd.
I have 50 servers running, they have all seen hard power off's. Once all at the same time! I have even powered off machines while in the middle of an fsck and never lost any daya. I suspect that you may have had some other issues that led to the non-recoverable data issue.
-- Once you have their hardware. Never give it back. (The First Rule of Hardware Acquisition) Sam Flory <sflory rackable com>