Pc recovery

I know this question has been asked a million times, and for the repetitiveness I apologize. Long story short, my younger sister did either a system restore or a pc recovery on the computer and as a consequence all of the families pictures are gone. I have followed dj smurf process of going into safe mode, and taking ownership of the user. But this has not helped. I still can't find the files. Now if i go to my computer and check the system space, it says that all of the space is available, except for a small portion of space that the programs currently on the computer are taking up. Does this mean the files are gone forever? If not is there any other way of finding them WITHOUT a software?

Any help is greatly greatly appreciated