Duplication and expansion of entire database

[tmcgill]

I've stumbled upon a problem that I'm not sure how to solve.
Somehow, following a drive replacement, wherein all my online files were consolidated from two drives to just one (I got a larger drive and moved everything from my former data drive, D:, onto my new, larger main drive, C:), I have wound up with basically every folder in my entire database appearing twice in the file explorer list. I don't recall exactly the set of steps involved, although I am pretty sure I did a relocation, perhaps of my entire drive to another.

But the end result is that I have one giant, flat list of a zillion folders, shown directly under C:, and then also have the hierarchy I used to have, with the exact same folders again. (Although it seems like for most or all of those duplicate pairs, one of those folders continually shows the "rescan" icon on it.)

I am really uncertain how to proceed, to consolidate this. I don't think I can just remove everything and add the folders back again- I'd lose all my database data, right? I use all kinds of attributes, so I would be very unhappy if I had to re-import all my photos from scratch and have only their metadata but nothing else.

Is there some way for me to tell IMatch that two folders are the same folder, or otherwise fix this mess? Essentially it's like I went and added, say, C:\folder_a to the database, but then added C:\folder_a\folder_a1 and C:\folder_a\folder_a2 directly also, resulting in them appearing more than once.

[Mario]

I have wound up with basically every folder in my entire database appearing twice in the file explorer list. I don't recall exactly the set of steps involved, although I am pretty sure I did a relocation, perhaps of my entire drive to another.

This usually means that the folders moved to a new location/drive were added again to the database, instead of using the relocate command. Off-line Folders and Files

Did you make a backup copy of your database before you performed this operation. In that case, you can restore that database and start over.

If you don't have a backup, remove all "new" folders with the "Remove Folder from Database" command available in the context menu of folders. You can usually identify the new/duplicate folders by looking at the files. They have no Attributes or categories, since they are "new" to the database.