thanks for the tips, i just noticed i may have lost of my originals. i usually import into lightroom directly from my memory card, then it saves it in the "my photos" lightroom directory directly on the computer. this time i copied all my photos directly to the desktop to make room on the memory card, so then lightroom just accesses them there and doesnt copy them to "my photos" like a memory card import, then i deleted the directory on the desktop. im using an undelete tool as we speak