Thanks everyone for the tips and recommendations. I think I will update some of my CF cards, although the missing files probably are a result of my own mistake, and not a card malfunction. Unfortunately, Recuva seems to only be compatible with Windows? I use Mac. I did download a few other programs that recover images, but all of the JPGs they recovered are named something like “#MG_5009” and won’t open [even the undeleted images on the card which should be fine], saying “It may be damaged or use a file format that Preview doesn’t recognize.” Tried opening in many different programs with no success, not sure why.
I checked into $300 dollar data recovery. They were very helpful and will take a look at my harddrive and see if it is something they can recover without replacing parts. If not, they can send it to Drive Savers, recommended highly as the best data recovery company in the world, which does more complex data recovery.
A word of advice to other photographers – be extremely careful with how you handle your files, hard drives – and please keep more than one backup!!