Need some LR help stat

Ok so I effed up pretty bad and I'm sick to my stomach right now. I highly doubt there is any fix for what I did, but if there is I'd be grateful for the help. More importantly I want to make sure this never happens again.

So I spent about 3 hours editing through an engagement session last night (I know that's long but I'm a perfectionist), got it done, exported low rez files for web gallery, went to bed. I did a back up BEFORE I started last night but not AFTER. First mistake that I'll never do again.

This morning I started doing some much needed clean up and organization on my hard drives. I decided to rename the folders where I have my RAWS to include the date of the wedding as well. Made sense to me at the time. I opened up LR to edit another session a few hours later and was surprised to see it showed all my sessions missing. After a few seconds of freaking out I realized it was because I changed the name. No bigge, I just right clicked, refreshed the folder, and everything showed up just fine with the new names. Easy....except....

The session I edited last night looked fine, but when I went inside about 80% of the images were showing "Offline or missing" still. So I tried to point it to the right folder again. Same deal. Everything I tried wouldn't work. All the other sessions were fine, just this one was messed up.

So after several minutes of messing with it I decided the only fix was to remove the folder and re-import the whole thing. I figured something was corrupt. Here is where things went wrong. I mistakenly thought that the images all carried the LR data with them once they were modified. Nope. The folder imported fine and all the images are ok, but my 3 hours worth of work last night is gone. Not only that but the client has seen the proofs and the chance of me getting them all exactly like they were is slim. They will be close, and the client won't notice I'm sure, but it makes me feel weird.

So, two questions:

1. Is there any way at all to restore what I had done? I have not closed LR after I did all this just in case there is. I'm sure there is not, but maybe.

2. I swear there is a way to keep the LR data with the files and I thought it was doing it by default. Apparantly not. Maybe I'm confused with something else but I thought I read something about XMP sidecars or something for just that reason? I dunno. At any rate is there a way to keep the LR data attatched to the file so that if I remove the folder from the catalog, then bring it back later, everything is intact?

Sorry for the epic post but I want to make damn sure I don't do this again. Backing up after every editing session is a no brainer and I'm stupid for not doing it I know. I was thinking backwards and backing up before every editing session to preserve everything I had already done in case I screwed something up.

Thanks for any help
Chris

Sorry, Chris, for your mistake! I feel for ya! As far as I know You can't recover the removed library info except for an immediate Undo right after you've done it. Others may know better, though.

In the future, I'd first suggest using Lightroom for those tasks (renaming or moving files and folders). It's easier and, as you've seen, less messy. Lightroom makes it pretty easy to do those things while maintaining the integrety and metadata.

As far as an XMP "sidecar", by default Lightroom doesn't use that method because it really slows down an import of any size. You can, though, save metadata files whenever you want by selecting the files and, in the Library module choose Metadata/Save Metadata to File (Ctrl-S). I find this handy if I want to work on files as a group in PS -- the edits show up in Bridge/ACR. However, as a whole, I just use the default system.

Note that the XMP file only retains some info -- it stores the editing info but not info pertaining to your organization like keywords, collections and such. So, if you save a metadata file and remove the file from the library and then re-import it, you will still lose all that library info. Plus, you will have to retrieve the editing metadata using Metadata/Read Metadata from File.