Data Recovery – Please help

Hey all. Thanks for even opening this.
Picked up a great new rig, and in transferring files via a usb stick (don’t ask, it was the best option available) I seem to have not made a proper copy and paste and have lost everything I tried to save from A-L. M-Z is still there as everything else was written over and copied properly. No it’s not still in a copy, and I’ve tried a couple of recovery programs and neither came close to getting anything remotely relevant. All files started on my desktop so I at least know where they were before they were deleted. If memory serves I believe the folder was too large for the recycle bin so it was auto deleted. I know I should have done a better job and checked and rechecked before deleting. It was an epicly poor day with the passing of a mate yesterday so my head wasn’t completely in the game.
Any help pointing me toward a really powerful recovery/undelete program would be greatly appreciated. I’d even paypal over some cash for a pint or two to someone if they can help sort this out.
Cheers, and thanks again for even taking the time to read this.
EDIT:
Did a quick search and found Stellar Phoenix seems to be the go to for this on here. I’m giving it a go for now. It’s found over 47k results and appears to be about 15% done. It’s bedtime so I hope I wake to something positive. Cheers.
Answer #1
If you have copied a lot of files on your M-Z part then it would be very hard to recover the files. The deleted file remain in memory until they are overwritten, an intensive copy/paste action will surely overwrite a lot of files. Stellar Phoenix is your best hope together with SleuthKit.
Answer #2
Other good ones are GetDataBack, R-Studio and File Scavenger
Answer #3
Thanks mate. Phoenix found a bunch after running for hours, but 95% of it was corrupted and not usable. You think I’ll have any better luck with the others?