saved sims becoming empty packages

okay here's the story: at the beginning of the summer i was having a field day creating sims in body shop... 31 in total. they were barely in the game before my dad's desktop decided to crash and... took them with it. i hadn't backed them up. so, i searched for everything .package with a recovery program and found them as well as several empty 1KB copies of them. I moved the NOT empty CC and saved sims onto flash drives for a computer transfer. i'd been meaning to get them on my laptop if i could anyway.

unfortunately ALL these .package files seem corrupted. from flash drives to computer they hold their sizes: sometimes thousands of KB for CC, in the low hundreds for saves sims. but AS SOON AS i open up the game or bodyshop, their file sizes revert immediately to 1KB. in clean installer they show up as empty packages. they don't appear in the game/BS at all.

i've re-downloaded my CC because i can't get it to hold its size. but i'm desperate to get my saved sims files to work, seeing as i can't re-download THEM. my laptop ONLY has sims2, nightlife, filemaid, and clean installer freshly dl'd. no hacks or mods.

they were the only versions of their files that the recovery program found... i don't understand why they keep reverting from a normal size to 1KB.

that said, two of the 31 sims ARE working. their file sizes do not shrink, unlike the others. they appear in game/BS just fine.

is there any way to install/open my saved sims without 'emptying' them?