After backing up the 2008 macbook pros harddrive the iphoto pictures are all gone!

A third party company made a backup of my 2008 Macbook pro by taKing the hard drive out of my 2008 macbook pro the videocard broke and i had nochange to do the backup by my own :( so i needed to go somewhere specialized and i paid 125$ for getting the conete harddrive backed up including all my photos music documents. After all the repairs from apples side were done i felt that the harddrive sounded kind of bad so i went back to the apple store and they told me they have to replace the hardrive and if i have an backup which i thought i had, so that was 2 days ago. As i got my macbook pro back from Apple i brought it to thd place who made my backup. All was saved on their extrernal hardrive but all my photos (iphoto) are gone :( they cannot find them anymore on the drive Nd they couldn't do anything for me :( now my macbook is fixed but all my memmories i kept as pictures are gone and i spent 125$ for a backing up my pictures and now they are all gone :( is there anybody out there who may can halp me tell me what to try ? Maybe my old harddrive where did apple sent it to? May i can get it back or could it be on the. Backup drive but under the library or iphoto folders are just some pictures :( like 500 . But there is one corrupt file which i also cannot open :(

I need help :( thank you