HELP!!! Aperture can't find original files!

Help!!! I imported a 64 Gig SD Card into Aperture for an engagement shoot. It imported the files, about 2,000 CR2 files. I had to clear the SD card to do another shoot. When I returned to Aperture, it shows a thumbnail of the file, but yellow exclamation point saying ORIGINAL IMAGE NOT FOUND!!! I'm guessing Aperture tried saving original files to the SD card and NOT my hard drive. When I was clearing the card, highlighted the files and put them in the trash on my IMAC. Then I emptied the trash. I also re-formatted the card on my Canon. So... I have downloaded Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery, Data Rescue 3, and ISkysoft Data Recovery to see if they will either recover files I emptied from my trash, OR recover the files on the SD card. I can't find the files! To this point, this my best work as a photographer. I'm mortified! If someone will help me I will be indebted to you forever. Thank you!

If you really deleted the files, there is little hope, but data recovery.
If you have you not restarted your mac, since you imported the images, don't do it., before checking the caches. Sometimes Aperture will write to the $TMPDIR, if the drive it trying to write to gets offline during import.
Check these system folders, if youcan find any cr2 files:
Quit Aperture.
Open a Terminal window and enter the following two line:
open $TMPDIR
This will open a Finder window with cryptically named folders. Dive into them and look for Aperture's Media cache folder. Are there any image files in the folder "com.apple.Aperture"?
Sometimes Aperture will write to that directory, if it cannot write to the Aperture library.
Also check the following location:
open /tmp
Can you find any images in the these two caches?
When I returned to Aperture, it shows a thumbnail of the file, but yellow exclamation point saying ORIGINAL IMAGE NOT FOUND!!! I'm guessing Aperture tried saving original files to the SD card and NOT my hard drive.
Are you using Aperture 3.5.1?
This version will tell you, where the missing originals should be, when you select the thumbnails and use the command "File > Show in Finder". When I try this, I get a panel showing the path to the missing original. Does that really point to a file on your SD card?
What are your Import settings in Aperture? What is set in the "Store files" option? "In the Aperture library " or something else?
-- Léonie

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