Adobe Lightroom -- don't do this...

Tonite, I decided I was going to try to reorganize my raw files to make things easier (and hopefully faster to synchronize) in Adobe Lightroom 3. So.. I moved my raw files and began to synchronize in LR...

That's about the time I kind of died a little inside. All my edits to everything I've shot since July are gone. Yes, I have the final exported versions, but if I want to tweak anything, I essentially have to locate the original, process it to close to what I had before, and then try to make the change. Less than ideal.

I know I'm probably screwed, but anyone know if there's a way to undo the stupid mistake I just made?

Ah, tragedy averted (well, ~95%).

Up until tonite, I did weekly catalog backups. I must have just missed last weeks (or it's gone for some reason), but I had one from 10-3-11 that had everything except for my last few days of shooting (and in reality, I only lost edits on a couple of pics). By reloading LR with that catalog, all my work came back (again, except for the last week or so). I now backup every time I exit (I'll probably delete the oldest backup every time I exit now) but it should save me going forward.

Not Lightroom specific, but couldn't you just use system restore or time machine to go back to a time prior to moving your files?

Yeah, more than likely. I think I'm OK with auto backups going forward, so at least I know I wont lose my stuff. I was pretty upset for a few minutes thinking I'd lost alot of work. In the grand scheme of things, it probably would have been about ~1500 images worth of retouching, etc. I'm kind of sad I lost the shots I worked on last weekend, but I think that's kind of a sign that it was something experimental anyways and I should avoid it (was messing with saturation in a couple of sunset shots.. worked OK in one, kind of eh in another).

Just so you know --

You can use Lightroom to move files and whole folders, and doing so will keep all your MetaData intact. It's nice and efficient.

Then, if you do decide to use your system to move stuff instead of LR, well, you can "rescue" the MetaData. When you open LR and it can't locate the images and folders, a little question mark/icon appears indicating that the file or folder is missing. If you right-click on an image or folder, you can choose to "find" the missing file/folder. When you then Browse and locate the files, Lightroom will restore them into the Catalog.

One more thing about that operation that is cool is that LR is "smart" -- once you have pointed to one image/folder it will check for others.

In fact, you presumably have some setup of "parent" folders for your images. If you start by choosing an upper-level "parent" that's missing in your catalog and locate it, Lightroom will do what it can to go through everything in and often around that folder. It's cool that way!

Mistabernie wrote in post #13248558
I moved my raw files and began to synchronize in LR...

And that's exactly the wrong way to do it.

As Tony says: Move your files using Lightroom: You can drag and drop in the folder pane in the left sidebar in the "Library module".

Fantastic information, thanks René and Tony! I truly appreciate it

So hypothetically, if I move all my raw folders into a '2011 Raws' folder inside Lightroom , it'll keep all the changes previously associated to them and allow me to speed up my syncs and keep things more organized..

I only had literally ~4-5 images from this past weekend that I did a bit of work on that I couldn't recover via the backup, and it's kind of sad because one of them is something I was going to print on canvas with a coupon as a gift for a friend, but now I can re-do it (and am armed with the knowledge to not allow something stupid like this to happen again). Thanks again so much!

Well, my workflow is a bit "different", since I developed parts of it before using LR. But here's what I do. YMMV.

1. I copy all raw files from CF card to a folder "YYMMDD_Event" on my internal and an external HDD, using ImageIngester. This also fills the IPTC with relevant metadata.
   
2. I open the entire folder in Expression Media 2 (formerly known as iView), so it get's cataloged there, and because I use EM2 for "legacy reasons" (ie. "I've always done it like that, so why change") and because it allows me to write metadata into XMP. (I can remove the .xmp files)
   
3. I make a selection: Everything crappy gets moved into a folder "Crap"
   
4. All "mwoa" shots (technically okay but boring, shots I have a better version of) stay in the main folder.
   
5. All good shots go into a folder called "voorselectie" (preselection)
   
6. I import that folder of images into LR.
   
7. Further selection: Images that are less good get rejected and moved back into the main folder.
   
8. Everything good gets edited.
   
9. After editing, I convert the CR2 files to DNG. (Library module: Library > Convert photos to DNG…)
   
10. Using Finder (yep) I move the DNG files to a sub folder called "DNG". Lightroom now get's confused: It lost the images location.
    
11. Again using Finder, I copy a folder "YYMMDD_Event" containing "voorselectie" and "DNG" to an external drive (replacing the folder there that was created by ImageIngester). A copy of the folder "YYMMDD_Event" containing everything except the "crap" get's copied to a backup drive.
    
12. The original "YYMMDD_Event" folder get's deleted.
    
13. EM2 catalog of both external HDD and Backup drive get's updated.
    
14. In LR, I point LR to the new location of the DNG file on the external HDD. Lightroom is happy again.
    
15. Done.
    

Yeah, the short of it is this -- I basically sort by date imported by Canon and raw files, and import those as catalogs into LR. Then, when I'm done, anything that I'm pleased with and will put up on the web or release gets exported to a Photoshop Out folder organized by event (the date really should be included in these, now that I think of it).

The next step in my process will be incorporating my portable HDD to move my archives to (up until I got LR, every month I'd take my raw shots off my HDD and put them on an external for archival purposes). I realize now that I can probably do this on an annual basis, which means that I should probably save up for a nice 1TB external and at the end of the year, start by putting my old archived raws on, then do what I said above -- copy everything raw-wise over from LR onto the new backup .

Thank you again for the in-depth explanation of your workflow but also for helping me to solidify my data backup and management plan going forward!

You're welcome.
Be sure to check out the links. First explains the moving, middle might help for importing files in the future, while the last probably gives some good insights on using collections for organization.