stuck in a loop on photo reconnect

[tomfete]

My HDD crashed and after restoring a new HDD Elements can only find about half of the albums when I try reconnect it keeps going to the old folder which no longer exists. As a test I reloaded a folder of pics I had a CD backup. When I reloaded the pics in a new folder elements still says nope these pics already exist. The reconnect keeps going back to the old folder that is not there anymore,when I manually point it to the new folder it will not reload them saying they already exist. All I have is the thumb nail in the original album

How do I get it to see and accept the new folder. The file name is still the same but it seems adobe is so stubborn the file name alone is not good enough it wants the old path/folder So I am at a loss as to how to reload pics I have on a cd backup. Any Help please?

[Greg_S.]

As a general rule, your catalog should only contain one copy of a file.  That file can appear in numerous albums or can be tagged with multiple tags.   But if you try to import the same file, even from a different folder location, the file will be rejected because it is already in the catalog.  To determine whether this is in fact the case, you can do a search for a file name (using Ctrl+Shift+K). 

Now, if the file is missing (and you only have a thumbnail with a question mark available) you can delete it from the catalog.  You should then be able to import the file from its new folder location.

If this is not your situation, please give us a little more detail.