Windows 7: Undo system recovery?

First off, I'd like to point out that I'm kind computer literate and some technical things you guys may say may be over my head. That being said, here's what happened. I booted up our Sony Viao running Windows 7 and a window popped up talking about system recovery. At the time I didn't even know what that meant, so I was like "what's this BS" and exited out of the window. Then the computer went into system recovery mode. I just thought it was doing an update of some sort, so I walked away and let it do it's thing. I at the time didn't know that while I was watching tv, our computer was erasing all of our data. When I came back, it was finished and said "restoring to factory settings". Then it set-up for first time use, pick a password, ect. Loosing our important documents is one thing, but we're super bummed we lost all of pictures of our daughters first year and a half of life. I know it's our fault for not backing up our files and we will from now on. So my question is, is there a possibility that the data wasn't wiped completely off the hard drive? Could the data just have been moved to another part of the hard drive and not be erased until that space is needed? I've tried booting up in "safe mode", but that didn't help find anything. Do you guys have any suggestions? Any help is very much appreciated!
Terran

Data on a computer justs keeps getting written over, find someone who does data recovery and see if they can help you.

Of course the data may get recovered by an expert but it costs the earth.

I think he`s upset enough !!

That was a last resort. I thought you guys might have had another idea. Thanks.

There are programs out there, such as this.

Data Recovery Software to Undelete Files; Disk recovery; Recover Deleted Files

It's not possible to accidentally run Factory Recovery. It has to be chosen from the Programs list or run from boot by pressing a series of keys. Then you must make several choices before it will begin. Did someone there do this? They might have chosen to save your files if so.

If not there's a slight possibility you'll find a windows.old folder in the C drive which contains the previous OS and data. I'd check just to see.