How to Recover Old Deleted Video?

I have an old toshiba laptop from back when I was in high school. I took a ton of pictures and videos from all kinds of trips and stuff. Well I deleted some videos a long time ago, like within 6 months of having the laptop (2007).

Anyway. Long story short I would like to recover the videos and pictures. I understand that there are programs like gary undelete. I need something that is free, and something that can hopefully find these. It is my understanding that these video files could have been overwritten over long periods of time, but is this true? Could they be totally unrecoverable? Or is there a way to unlock these videos?

 

Seeing as how it's been 5 years or so, your chances of any recovery of those files would appear to be slim or none.

You could take the HD to recovery experts but the cost might be $100's of dollars with no guarantee of usability.