Can not remove ? from external hard drive folder in LR5 & can't link smart preview & original pic

I have LR5 and a MacBook Pro OSX 10.8.5 I have an external hard drive that when I imported photos from my cameras memory card I selected the hard drive as the source to move the pictures to. I forgot if I clicked ADD, MOVE, or COPY.
In the library mode in LR5 the external hard drive shows up under folders, but has a question mark on every folder on the external hard drive. I control clicked on the question mark for the first folder (the parent folder?) and choose “Find missing folder”. I then navigated to the external hard drive and clicked on that same folder, then clicked choose. Nothing happened. I tried this same method with individual folders and the same, I control click on the folder with a question mark, navigate to the same folder on the hard drive, click on it (I tried both just clicking on the folder so it was highlighted and actually opening the folder), and select choose, the question marks remain.
1. How do I link the two to remove the question mark?
Second question, possibly related. I have a collection in the library mode that has only previews, the originals were added to the same external hard drive as above. When I navigate to the hard drive via my finder (not in LR5), the originals are there. When I am in the library mode in LR5, in this collection, and click on the preview square in the top right corner of an individual picture in that collection, it says “image can be edited using its smart preview but the original file can not be found. Would you like to locate it".
The original location of it shows below this statement and is correct; it shows the path to the external hard drive and the folder where the original is contained that I mentioned previously. I navigate to that picture on the external hard drive and select it. I get another notice box pop up that says “the file is associated with another photo in the catalog. Each file can only be associated with one photo.” I select show in library and it brings me right back to the image that is a smart preview only. I am stuck in this loop and cant figure out how to associate the original on the external hard drive with the smart preview in LR5.
1.   I have the originals still on my camera memory card, do I import again? I am afraid I will loose all my edits.
I hope I gave you the right info. Every link I find to answer this question is related but not quite the same, any link you know of is apreciated. Thanks!
Ashley

Have you ever re-named files using duplicate file names e.g. names that have been used previously?
See if this link helps to locate missing files and near posibilities:
http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/locate-missing-photos.html

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