Files in a shortcut folder missing due to change of HDD

Last week I have handed my old laptop to my tech support colleague, asking him to allow me to keep my old HDD. He gave me my new laptop and after some copying of files, returned me my old HDD in a case. All well until here.
On my old laptop, I had a shortcut on the desktop pointing to a folder on the C drive ( the only drive of my laptop) . After my colleague removed the HDD and it turned into an external HDD, all files from that shortcut are gone. I can find the shortcut, but it is empty, as well as the original folder (of which I created the shortcut). My mistake was, that I worked with the shortcut in the same way I would work with a regular folder: arranged subfolders, saved data etc. and assumed, this will get transfered to the original folder. Therfor I did not think I would need to do something else to secure the data before the change if my laptops. Do I have any chance of recovering the files once available under my shortcut? Thank you for your time, Yuppy

Hi I think your files should still be on the external hard drive. Have looked for them there?