iMatch shows double instance of all images on external drive

[rgdudley]

I normally work with images within iMatch on the hard drive and when I have the details ready I place the images into folders on an external drive. 

So a small part of my pictures are on the C drive and the bulk are on an external drive. 

Recently I dragged a folder from the c drive to the external drive (within iMatch of course).  imatch failed to see this new folder on the external drive although it was removed from the c drive and did appear on the external drive in windows explorer.  I re-scanned the external drive.  The folder still did not show up in imatch and was removed from the external drive and ended up in the recycle bin.   The iMatch view of the external drive now looks like the attached image ... two instances of the flies on the external drive although in windows explorer there is only one copy.

Should I "remove from database" one of these instances?  That is what I am tempted to do.   Probably the first one with the blue dot..

[Mario]

I'm not sure that I understand what you did.

The only way for the same folder to show up in IMatch is adding it again from another media.
This happens, e.g.,, when you change the hard disk or the media serial number changes for another reason.

IMatch then marks the original folder as off-line (yellow icon) because it cannot find it anymore.
The proper way to handle this is to use the Relocate command to tell IMatch where the folder has moved to. Even if the disk is the same (D:), the media serial number is different. Relocating from D: to D: allows IMatch to pick up the new location of the folder.

If you have just moved a folder, use relocate on the top-level folders.

In your screen shot apparently IMatch considers both folders as on-line and can find both.
I'm not sure how you managed to do this. Or what Windows did to make IMatch think that the folder exists twice. Very strange.

Close the database and make a backup.
Re-open and then use the "Remove Folder from Database" (NOT Delete Folder!) to remove the extra copy. Before, make sure that the folder you keep has all the categories etc. - aka, don't remove the "old" folder. This would also remove all data associated with the files from your database.

if you make an error or something strange happens, restore the backup copy of the database and start over.

[rgdudley]

That seemed to work.  I will now try again to drag a folder with a few pictures to the external drive.

[rgdudley]

I answered too soon.  The phantom folders keep reappearing in iMatch (but are not actually on the external drive.

Typically what happens is that when I "remove" the unwanted folder from the database it disappears, but then when I restart iMatch and wait a few seconds, the phantom folder reappears.

Also I note that whenever I update one of the subfolders on on the external drive (for example change some metadata ) then that folder will appear as a phantom duplicate directly under D: (first example see highlighted folder also appears directly under D:) or under the phantom main folder (example 2). 

Also, the folder I re-scanned after making some changes to metadata still indicates it needs to be rescanned even though all the meta data is up to date. (example 3).  If I rescan again a new phantom folder will be created!

[Mario]

Never heart about "phantom folders". And IMatch 5 is out for almost 3 years now.

And if IMatch does not show the folder as off-line, it can find the folder physically and access the files.
Do both drives show the same media serial number? I wonder, because IMatch an only add a folder twice if the media id of the disk differs. You can check in the folder properties panel under the tree when you select the media.

[rgdudley]

Although I have backups, all these problems are with a single external drive.  Have not used the others recently except to back up the primary drive. 

I have no problems with the portion of the database and pictures on my C: drive.   

The problem started when I moved some folders to the D: drive and saw that iMatch had not correctly incorporated that move.  At that point I tried re-scanning the external drive, which resulted in the double counting of the folders.  I have not had this problem previously, although I haven't moved files to the external drive recently (prior to today).

Really puzzling.   Maybe I will try using one of the backup external drives.

[rgdudley]

OK... Looks like the problem is solved.

I used relocate and selected the same folder that I was relocating.  That is, I pointed it back to itself.  That seems to have worked and the folders needing updates managed to update automatically.

(FYI This was all on a new Dell Inspiron 17-7000 with a Sandisk 960G SSD and a 2 month old 1T seagate external drive.)

[Mario]

That's what I tried to explain above. IMatch can only add a folder twice when the media serial number (disk replaced, media serial number of disk changed by other means). In that case, Relocate must be used to inform IMatch that the D: media is now on another disk.

Maybe your external drive makes up a new media serial number randomly, or maybe even during every startup?
In that case you will have to relocate the media in D: every time.