Lost pics (no solution in faqs or knowledgebase)

Question

Ok here it goes, I am on the most current version of Lightroom, and I have apparently 132 missing pics, I believe the error is on my part and not the database's from an upgrade. The reason is that after importing I didn't export them to my folders. Now the strange thing is this, the pictures still show up in lightroom. Though of poorer quality,they are still displayed and a message appears stating that the files are missing... I know they are not on the hdd. I can't edit or export the images which it displays. remember, this is not a question of an invalid path or an upgraded program looking at the wrong database.
Is there a way I can recover the images which lightroom is displaying? I have searched through the hdd and the lightroom folders to see if there are thumbnails or some such image which it uses to display the missing pics in my catalog, but I don't seem to see any. The images are extremely important (in this case, thank goodness, for personal rather than business reasons), or otherwise I would just delete them and forget about it while making a mental note of exporting recent imports prior to deleting from my media.
Unfortunately due to the fact that I use several programs such as Maya Unlimited, adobe creative suite, mudbox, xsi, vue, combustion, avid xpress pro,pixel farm, etc, etc, I use XP pro as the common ground for a variety of software, (some of which is better on Linux, while others on the darwin based OSX.) to increase my workflow and insure I have all the programs in one environment. Now if adobe would just get around to creating RPMs or Tarballs...(smiles)

Answer 1

alright!!! to don solomon: the executable script worked!! though I am a bit paranoid as I mentioned before about running unknown executables which don't come from a reputable repository. It did the job just fine, it rebuilt from the DB noindex set a new folder in the root directory and filled it up with 1gig of jpgs assigned with quite distinct names to what the file's names had been.
the photos scale were off a bit, a little elongated but the color res was actually quite remarkable....definitely a handy tool, I just hope I haven't just joined a bot network run by an apparently very bright young programmer...(heh heh just joshing...I hope.) Now there is the task of rummaging through those files, renaming them with the names of the original missing files, point LR to them and those pesky error messages and lost file list will disappear.
and to John, I used a couple recover programs as you had mentioned and I am absolutely amazed!! I had no idea original raw files could be recovered off of that type of media after so many formats. I have long understood that hard drives, when a file is deleted, lose only the reference to what is deleted and the file isn't truly gone until the area on which it resides is overwritten by something else, and even then files are still recoverable...hence the need for a good secure shredder which will make several passes. Unfortunately, the files I had recovered (a whopping 326!!) where all taken after the pictures in question....but now I know..heck some of those pics have survived ten or twelve formats!! I am sure that is nothing new to some of you power user/photo pros, but I was floored.
thanks guys...goes to show, that there is always hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. (big smiles)