It all sounds a little strange - your photos must be there somewhere and I believe photo recovery should still be possible.
Please make sure you download the latest version of Recover My Files from
Data Recovery Software to Undelete; File recovery; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files.
When you run a scan, select "Complete File Search", but in the drive selection window, select and search your "physical" hard drive, and search for the JPEG file types.
By searching the physical drive you are telling Recover My Files to ignore all partition information and search the raw disk - this will find ALL files on your PC - including those ones that are not lost - but is a good test to see if they can be found.
Good luck.