Deleted my folders in Lightroom and lost all editing work

[GRIGORIOS267338084g1m]

Unfortunately, it seems I made a big mistake. As quite a few of my folders had the 'question mark' sign, I decided instead of searching their location in the hard drive, to delete them and import the photos again. This is when I realized that I had deleted all the editing work I had done till then. I tried to restore a previous Lightroom catalog but apparently, my Lightroom catalog seems to back up itself the moment I turn off Lightroom although I am trying to skip the step.

Do you believe there is any solution? I have no idea where the smart previews are.. 

[AxelMatt]

Normally every backup will be create in a seperate folder namend with the date and the time when the backup is created.

I've been looking on a Windows machine and I think on a Mac it will be the same.

[GRIGORIOS267338084g1m]

Thanks, you are right. I managed to find a backup saved on the 25th of March in the folder you mentioned. However, now I have an issue with my collection in lightroom. Although I created collection sets categorized by year, these sets do not exist anymore, there are just my collections, and my most important photos from a trip to Pakistan do not even exist, not in the collections or the folder in Lightroom. It appears like they have never been imported although the backup is very recent. Talking about approximately 700 photos. I have no idea why, I just hope it takes time to sync!