files disappeared

I guess this is the correct forum to post this question.
I went to work on a photo in CS5, so I hit open and point over to libraries/pictures and its empty. A few thousand shots in there or at least supposed to be in there.

I open LR4 and it shows all my shots, I click to open in explorer and it has them in a different directory under C users mypictures.

How can that have happened?

When you save a picture it usually defaults to user/my documents/my pictures which is in the root of the c. It probably actually never moved, if you open in Lightroom I bet its in the directory I species as well.

When I download from my card to PC, I put the files in the pictures library. Could LR be using the backups it makes?

You should get in the habit of just putting the card in and browsing to the card and manually putting the pictures where you want them, not where the computer tells you to put them. They'll wind up all over the place.

torkk wrote in post #15689921
I went to work on a photo in CS5, so I hit open and point over to libraries/pictures and its empty. A few thousand shots in there or at least supposed to be in there.

Sounds like you have your Libraries\Pictures set to a different location. I set my Libraries\Pictures to a location on D volume where I have all my user documents. Right click Libraries\Pictures and click Properties to see where "Library location" points to.

torkk wrote in post #15689921
I open LR4 and it shows all my shots, I click to open in explorer and it has them in a different directory under C users mypictures.

The correct location is C:\Users\<username>\My Pictures. That's the default location for all pictures. Libraries\Pictures includes C:\Users\<username>\My Pictures, unless the user modifies it.

The confusion arises because "pictures library" isn't a location. You can actually have pictures all over your hard drive and computer and they get added to your "pictures library" apparently at the whim of Windows. If you right click on "pictures library" you will see that it is not a folder, the first thing it lists is Library locations and then it offers "Set save location", "Include a folder" and Remove. Then it offers "Optimize this library for ..." and there is a drop down list of items.

Then there is Attributes: a tick box and "shown in navigation pane" it should read "shown in navigation is a pain"

Exactly. That's why I said to get in a habit of manually putting the pictures where you want them every time.

Yeah I found them and redirected my library to point there. But I have to really get a back up solution going lol