All my pictures have disappeared from my Laptop!!!! Help, please!!!!?

Question

I was transfering some pictures from my camera and then I started organizing them in folders. As I was dragging some pictures to a folder which contained more photos, suddely all my folders disappeared ( I had 5-6 folders with pictures). Now they're all gone and I can't find them anywhere. There are only two folders left in Pictures and they're both empty. I tried everything, from system restore to recovery program...and nothing! I have a Toshiba laptop with Windows Vista.
I am desperate and I need all the help I could get! I should mention that this is not the first time this is happening with Windows Vista as I had the same problem with some videos, they disappeared while I was trying to transfer them on my external memory and I was not able to find them anymore.
Thank you!

I searched the files on start....and nothing..they're not in the recycle bin either! I tried using some of the trial versions of some recovery programs and it didn't work. I don't know if investing in a good recovery program would help...or it would just be a waste of money.

Answer 1

did you look in the recycle bin ... of course you could have the settings to delete permanently and bypass the recycle bin ... Vista still has a few major bugs ... buy you'd already be aware of that ... sorry ... doing recovery by remote control is impossible ... one would need to physically have your lappy

Answer 2

First thing to do... Not much! If they were deleted, you can likely recover them 100%, but if you overwrite them, they are gone forever. It's possible they just got moved somewhere. Try searching for them. Try clicking on START, then search, then Pictures, then search. If you are 100% sure you know one of the filenames, you can search for that too.
If they aren't there, and not in your recycle bin, you might want to invest in a good data recovery program. Some data recoveries are VERY difficult, but this sounds like a pretty easy one with the right software and the right steps. Remember, you want to recover them to a drive OTHER than what you're recovering them from, and the more you 'do' with your computer now, the higher chance you may overwrite them.

**UPDATE**
I oopsed, the search directions were for Windows XP. Many decent recovery programs have trials. Basically, they let you know what they can recover, but you can't recover anything until you pay. Here's a few:

GetDataBack - www.runtime.org
Zero Assumption - www.z-a-recovery.com
R-Tools - www.r-tt.com
Power Data Recovery - www.eofsoft.com
Stellar Phoenix -www.stellarinfo.com

All are good. Personally, I have had very good results with Power Data Recovery and Stellar Phoenix.

Of course, the disclaimer... If the pictures are VERY important, consider a Data Recovery company. Although many are very expensive, some are as cheap as $450.