Why did he send out your hard drive anyway?
Definitely get it back, even if it takes some doing. It's really pretty hard to conceive that your pix aren't somewhere in there.
You need to find a true computer geek, like mine. I've gone through a couple of crashes, a new motherboard, and haven't lost anything.
Here's a very good back up gadget that I'm considering.
http://www.yugster.com/dspYoursUntilGone.aspx
Good luck! You can retrieve them.