how to recover data on a corrupted ssd

Hello,

I believe my mac drive ssd has been corrupted. It is going to be sent to a company but they do charge for getting back the data. is there any way i can do this myself?

i have heard that you can download mac os x and run it from a hard drive, and use ur corrupted ssd on target mode.

my recovery partition isnt even working, however, i do have a 2nd working macbook air.

will i also be able to transfer the data over thunderbolt wire, rather than firewire?

and are there any data recovery programs that you would recommend?

many thanks