Formatted old laptop by mistake—best free tool to get 300GB of photos back?

Hey guys, hoping to get a bit of advice here. I formatted my old 10-year-old Acer laptop (Windows 10, HDD) and realized too late that I forgot to back up around 300GB of photos and videos.

I did a scan with Disk Drill just to check, and luckily all the files are still intact. But I can't afford the Pro version to actually recover them. I know people usually recommend PhotoRec, but is there anything a bit more user-friendly that is completely free for this much data? Thanks in advance!