Lost all previous files in compressed folder when moved ne..

I needed to move new files into a compressed folder, so I copied the files,
opened the compressed folder and pasted them there. An error message was
generated that 'the compressed folder is invalid or corrupt' and all existing
files in the compressed folder disappeared and were replaced by the new files
I was trying to add in! I tried recovering the compressed folder using
'Restoration' version 2.5.14 & 'PC Inspector File Recovery' version 4.0, but
I was only able to recover a compressed folder with a $ for the first letter
of the file name (e.g. $older instead of folder) which on opening generated
the error message 'Cannot open file: it appears to be an invalid archive'. I
tried installing WinZip to open it but the same error occurs. I tried
compressed folder and zip file recovery softwares to open the recovered
compressed folder (which by the way is the same size as the one I had before
I tried adding new files), namely Zip Repair Tool, ZipRecover, DiskInternals
Zip Repair and Nucleus Kernel Zip. All these softwares recover files within
the corrupt compressed folder that weren’t even in there in the first place!
The repaired compressed folder contains 13 files making up 112Kb whereas the
compressed folder I had before had around 600 files and was 48.8Mb in size.
Please, help me recover my original compressed folder before it was replaced
by new files in it, or some other way I can recover the files previously in
there. I’m at my wit's end and the files present there were extremely crucial
to my work. I would be more than grateful.

Thank you.