So Frustrating!!!

Well I did the dumbest thing ever and I am so sad about it. Some how I managed to delete my entire picture file on my computer. All of my downloaded pictures are gone! I had a friend come over tonight and he was able to retrieve a small portion of the pictures that were lost, but the other ones are gone! I ams o sad about it and was so sick just thinking about it the other day when it happened. I guess there is some kind of software that I can get can possibly get the rest of them back, but there is no guarentee and the software is pretty exspensive. My friend said that the pictures are probably getting over written the more I am on the computer and in order to have been able to get them back I shouldn't have touched the computer at all since it happened. Well I did get on the computer quite a bit since then and that means that a majority of the pictures that were lost are gone for good. Anyway I guess we just have to start over and a word to the wise....make sure you back up your files often!!!