Needing to recover photo deleted files that aren't backed up on any cloud or Time Machine

For the first time I transferred many files from my Canon scanner, operated from my MacBook Pro with the Canon IJ Scan Lite.They were designated to the Picture folder associated with under a file not connected to iPhotos. I then selected all the photos and dragged them over to my external drive in their own folder.

And as I've done thousands of times, after I confirmed the photos arrived in my external drive I deleted them in the original folder on my laptop. But this unique time, after I did so all the photos on my Lacie were labeled as a "Alias" at 820 bytes and no image any longer, just a blank white icon saying can't locate the original image....I think I see what happened, but that's never happened when I've selected photos/videos from a laptop folder and dragged to a folder on my Lacie before.

apparently my current hard drive was not the default for my Time Machine so that doesn't seem will help.

what's a recommended way (from Apple, 3rd party or whatever) to recover? I just tried Disk Drill and that didn't help, no help at all it seems. Only seems to "recover" what's already on my actual disk and not anything deleted lol.