Ok So I recently accidentally deleted files by switching the source and destination directory around in my command.

I specifically ran this code:

as you can see, I deleted all the files I wanted to back up because they got replaced by the empty directory which I was trying to back up to. Is there any way to recover the files which I deleted?? I spent around $1000 and had a professional recover all deleted files from the ext3 hard drive, however none of the files recovered were ones which I was trying to back up!!

any advice would be appreciated!!

If that is all the recovery service could get out of the drive, I don't see that there is much else you can do.

How long after the files were deleted did you take the drive out of service? Did the recovery service give you an image of the drive in the state they got it? At this point, it may be impossible to recover any more files, it depends on how much data has been changed or written to since the original incident.

well, i immediately shut down the computer (once I had figured out my files were missing), and then immediately sent it to a data recovery place. I have been looking through the raw data they sent me (none of the file names were recoverable, simply the files and file extensions) and I seem to be finding plenty of deleted files which were on the drive but none of which were deleted by the rsync mistake. IDK I was just kinda hoping that maybe someone knows something I dont. well I'm hoping anyway