Yep, I guess there's about 5,000 pictures give or take. I don't have an exact count but that sounds about right.
And yep, it's been awhile since I've run a manual defrag. And, I've not dared do anything to that computer since this deleteing episode.
Preview & 'What does 'Files being overwritten before delete' mean - Some of the few pictures that are recoverable do show the expected picture in the preview pane. But, for one example, for a studio photo that was taken last year it shows, in the preview pane, a picture from our security camera that was taken 2 days 'before' I accidentally deleted the pictures. So.....? The picture should still be there right? It shouldn't have been overwritten by another program with a file that has a datetime stamp prior to my actually deleteing the photo studio file.
Ok, how did I delete these files. I don't think I 'actually' did. I had both the new & old laptops on my home network. While on the new laptop I copied (from old) and pasted (to new) the folder the files were in. The Windows copy said that there was '5.5gb' to copy. And, I left the computer to run after my little boy. I came back quite a while later and the windows copy message box was no longer being displayed. So, I assumed it was done and went on copy & pasting other stuff. Now, I did delete 'other' files across the network from my new laptop but, I specifically recall thinking don't delete the "Seth" folder. Well, its gone. My guess is that somewhere in the copy....about early 2008 something went oops and it stopped coping and my files disappeared. Is it possible that there's someplace else in my network that I could find these files?
I have been working off the results of a 'deep scan'. And last night, early am actually, I recovered everything I possibly could (and then some) to a thumb drive.
I've been working on this for 4 days now and I've about decided that this is all I'm going to get. It's my fault I didn't have a proper backup for these files. And now I'm going to have to live with the result of my inactions.
Thank you for all your help.
Nikki