Re: why can't i download my saves from the cloud on origin?

@Blackredminty  Origin does have a cloud-saving function, but it's not enabled for Sims 4.  (It's generally for more linear games, for example something like Battlefield or Mass Effect where the save size is relatively small.)  I'm guessing the EA support rep who tried to help didn't know that your Sims 4 saves wouldn't have been stored in the cloud.

There's an outside chance you got lucky and Microsoft's OneDrive service uploaded the contents of your Documents folder.  In that case, you'd simply need to sign into OneDrive with the account you used before your hard drive died and then download the Sims 4 folder from there.  Otherwise, unless you made a manual backup to an external device or a third-party cloud storage service (Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.), your saves are only stored locally on your computer.  So there is unfortunately no way to recover them.