When preparing to format a friends computer, I was backing up his files on to my computer using an Ubuntu Live cd and sftp. The first thing I started copying was his pictures, around five gigs worth. After two minutes or so I stopped the copying process because it was taking too long and I thought of a way of speeding it up. I then proceeded to delete the copied files on my computer and just start over again. I had a number of terminals open so it's possible, I suppose, that I accidentaly removed the files from his computer, although I don't think so, the files are also gone from mine as intended. Anyway, his pictures are no longer there. Discovering this I then fired up ntfsundelete and of the 12,000 files or so it shows not one of them is one of the missing pictures. I also took the HD out his computer, attached it to mine, fired up my Windows VM and ran chkdsk which fixed some minor problems but still no pictures. Nothing has been written to the disk since I've had the computer so you would think even if I had deleted them they would be recoverable but that doesn't seem to be the case and I'm all out of ideas. Searches on google haven't turned up anything I haven't already tried.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Has anyone had the same problem? I'd very much like to recover these files.