I realized that most of the time, getting the site back up, having lookup and other types of ancillary data (like products, prices, etc), was the most important thing. Recovering other data such as older orders, was secondary.
historical data should be on separate systems and is far less critical than current transactional data such as prices and products that lead to sales systems. thereby, production transaction systems need to be very highly available. administrators should be focused on bringing these online immediately WITH good data, if that system goes down. historical data is what management uses to assist in analyzing where to go. current data is the life blood of an organization. that needs to be running all the time. management can afford to move slower than the front lines of an organization.
with this in mind, the question isn't downtime v. data loss, all systems need to be up and running. the question is what data/systems should have priority in going back online.
if it's affordable, having redundant systems and sites, eliminate this question. replicating data to warm sites makes this issue moot.