Lost all event files -- can't locate them anywhere. Please help.

Question

All of my work has just disappeared. Please help if you can. I'll describe my steps to help you understand what occurred.
1. I was working in an event folder with a name "New Event 7-17-09." There were numerous videos inserted as cutaways and other elements.
2. On two occasions I had error messages that a video was not able to copy in. I noticed a half black-half gray icon. I re-generated the videos. The first time I had quit iMovie and relaunched, only to find that all of my source videos were gone from the event pane. I had to re-import them.
3. Just now it happened again. I was afraid to quit and lose the video again so I took a chance and clicked on another event date and tried to import this video that couldn't be copied. Well, it copied okay. HOWEVER, the event date I was working in, "New Event 7-17-09," has now disappeared completely. And again -- all of the source videos are gone when I click around in the project pane. The videos only now exist in the work folder they were imported from...not from within iMovie. They are not in the Movie folder.
4. I checked "Show Contents" and there are no project files in there.
So I am left with a project pane but no event pane with all of these source files. I have lost, in essence, all of my work.
I didn't delete anything, I didn't move anything. I just clicked once in a different event pane, and then all of what I had was gone.
Can you please tell me where else I can look?
Does this program utilize some kind of strange file system or something?
Any help you can offer is very much appreciated.

Answer 1

dmag101 wrote:
.. I'll look into Time Machine but, with 400GB in data already, I'd have to be saving to a 1TB drive -- right? Very shortly, another 500GB wouldn't be enough.
Timemachine is one of the most underestimated (english?) features of 10.5.
It is as simple as that (a no-click application )
and it is not just a backup of 'all', you can select down to a single file, what to be recovered..
speaking of TBs: I have 3 iPhoto Libs (~20k pics), Timemachine backups on the hour, and I do manually 'clone' twice a year onto a 3rd HDD... -
when hopefully this year I switch from tape to SDcard video, I'll spend another 100€ on the next TB-drive.. latest offer in the papers here: 1TB=66€..
long term storage IS an issue in these 'digital times' ... - future historians will call it the 'Black Hole in History' => no documents of this period in time, due to 'data loss' ...- any cheap paperback lasts longer than any digicam still/video..