Please help! PS crashed and did NOT autosave hours of work!

I know it doesn't help in this situation, but please see Schofield's Second Law:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/follow-schofields-three-laws-of-computing-and-avoid-disasters/

I just got so comfortable not having to save, because it's always backed things up for me before without fail. I definitely learned my lesson though, haha.
As I've been reworking these images, I'm saving very frequently. 

I have plenty of disc space and scratch disks aren't a problem. I've got 32g of RAM, but the files themselves are INSANELY huge. I'm working with giant images and composites of 60+ layers. The crashing issues are stemming from other hardware problems on my laptop, which I thought had been fixed the last time I pulled it apart and rebuilt it, but the issues are popping back up again. My battery is going out and I believe there's an issue with my secondary harddrive. Working on all of that now.
Undicidiplined, sure. But admittedly, it's mostly because I don't yet understand the difference between PSB and the typical PSD. That's why I didn't save, I suppose, because I was worried about saving it as an incorrect file type and losing work. I was almost done, so I was trying to flatten all the layers that I wouldn't need to pull from later, and just get it down to a file size small enough to save as PSD before I made my JPG versions. 
It's not crashing all the time, but if the cord gets unplugged it will die in a matter of minutes, so something as simple as me walking away to do the dishes can result in me having to come back and reboot the whole thing. When PS starts back up, it's always reopened the files I was working on, regardless of size. I suppose that's why I got so comfortable allowing myself to work on images for multiple days without saving, because I've just never really ran into this issue before now.

But, ya live and ya learn. I reckon it's about time I look into wtf PSB actually is so I don't make this same mistake twice. 

• Ctrl/Cmd + S takes only a second and means the difference between data saved or data lost forever. 
• On big projects, I save multiple times under different file names, just in case I need to revert to a previous version. 
• In the event of a power outage, Photoshop will recover the saved file for you.

If you had saved your file at any point in the editing session, you'd see it listed in your Recent History folder. 

File > Open Recent...

If it's not there, that tells me you never saved the file to your hard disk, which is very, very regrettable.

I can assure you, you'll never make that mistake again.  It only happens once. 😓

Are you using a proper file browser (Windows Explorer or Bridge) to keep track of where you are actually saving your files? If not, you're going to keep getting into trouble.

It also sounds like you have bigger problems. If your files are too big to save regularly, you need more disk space. If your files regularly open with autorecovery, you have a lot of crashing, and you need to figure out why. If you're running out of scratch disk space, so that Photoshop can't store temporary working data as you work, it will crash or shut down before you can save.

I said your approach sound undisciplined, and I stand by that. I have used Photoshop professionally for more than fifteen years, 8 hours a day, and I have never lost a file, ever.

Also, why would my "open recent" list not include any of the files that were actually recent? This list has never worked properly for me. Every file it lists hasn't been touched in months, and all of the recent files are just not listed there. It's always been like that. 

Autosave, autorecover... it's semantics.
Why would auto recover work on some photos but not others?
I didn't close photoshop, it DID crash. But it only recovered half of my work.
These files were too large to save regularly, so I was just trying to finish them before saving. They have closed and reopened with autorecovery multiple times over the last few days, so there's no reason they shouldn't have opened this time. The files it did open were never saved, not even once, and they opened with the auto recovery just fine. 

There is no such thing as auto-save. That is a misunderstanding. Photoshop does not save for you.

What Photoshop has is auto-recovery if the application crashes, and only then. For this to work, the file has to be saved (by you) at least once.

Here's how it works:

• Photoshop keeps a copy of open (and saved once) files in an autorecovery folder. In a regular shutdown sequence, this folder is emptied.
• If Photoshop crashes, the folder is not emptied since the shutdown sequence is cut short.
• When Photoshop starts up, it looks in this folder. If there's something there - which there normally won't be - the content is automatically opened.

In other words, there's no point in looking for this folder if the files don't open automatically. There's nothing there.

I think you should take this as a fair warning to improve your working habits, which frankly sound a bit undisciplined.