Rescue my photos from a lightroom 5 catalog! PLEASE!!!

Question

Okay, I have read every help thread and web page, and nobody seems to have advice for my specific problem. I am praying for the sake of my whole summer's worth of work that someone here can help me.
I used Lightroom 5 on a Windows 8 laptop this summer and had a catalog of about 5000 photos, most of which I did not have extra copies of anywhere. This was not intentional, but when I plugged my sd card into my laptop, lightroom would import the photos and I assumed it was also placing a hard copy in a folder somewhere. I am a moron. Anyway.
That laptop partially MELTED, and a friend managed to back up my hard drive to my external, which was obviously formatted for a PC. Here is where it gets tricky.
Another friend lent me her old laptop, which can't use lightroom 5. I installed lightroom 4, but found I could not open or access my old catalog. All of those partially-edited photos that I hadn't exported yet are trapped in there. I am a student. I worked hard on those photos. Dozens of shoots this summer with models and makeup artists are rendered worthless if I cannot get those photos.
My friend lent me his computer, which I am on right now. It's a newer mac and has Lightroom 5. BUT it won't open my catalog from my hard drive because of some formatting issue. So. I copied the catalog and the previews catalog (trying to follow How to Recover Images from Lightroom Previews ) to the desktop, but that method is not working. I've tried everything. I am having a full emotional breakdown. This work means SO much to me and if it's lost I have let SO many people down and I am BEGGING someone, anyone, to help me find a solution. 5000 photos I may never get back. It's unbelievable. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HELP.

Answer 1

The Lightroom (LR) catalog does not contain your image files. When piictures are imported LR moves a copy of the image files from the camera memory card to a folder location on your hard drive. If you do not specify a folder location they will be copied to the default Windows 8 'My Pictures' folder. That is where you will find your image files! The LR Catalog contains your LR Develop module editing settings for image file and any metadata tags you may have added.
Your LR 5 catalog will not open using LR 4 because it is an older version that does not support the new features. A Mac system will not be able to open the catalog with LR 5 since the external drive is probably NTFS formatted. You can however "read" the files on the external drive using Mac Finder. Check it and see if you can find your camera image files, which are probably in the 'Pictures' folder.
justhelpmegetmyphotos wrote:
That laptop partially MELTED, and a friend managed to back up my hard drive to my external, which was obviously formatted for a PC. Here is where it gets tricky.
What do you mean by "melted?" Please explain the symptoms, what actually failed,  and how the hard drive was copied over to the external drive.
As dj_paige has mentioned you should make regular backup copies of your LR catalog to an external hard drive. You also need to backup all of your imported image files in the 'My Pictures' folder or wherever you have stored them! I also suggest reading LR tutorials to get a better understanding of how "non-destructive" editing works with your image files. Here's a good place to start:
http://tv.adobe.com/show/getting-started-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-5/
Read 'Importing Your Images' first and continue from there as needed.