ITunes no longer recognizes my music library

So I have the bulk of my music library stored on an external HD and for me to listen to music all I have to do is connect my HD. I have never had a problem with it before, but now iTunes doesn't know where my music is even though it is connected to the HD. Alternatively, it asks to me to find the music I select and when I do it then plays it but it still can't find the remainder of my files.
How do I get iTunes to further recognize my files without individually finding them for it?
Completely lost,
Jimmy

You don't say if your mac or windows, but mac itunes has library file and music file - click on library and you get the app window, click on music file and you'll find the playable files which are the ones you have to link to is you're getting the ! mark - I copied the whole itunes file to an external firewire 800 HD and linked itunes to that folder and no problems - but a couple weeks later I started to get the ! mark and when I went looking in the music file, there were no longer there... a couple weeks later and I've gone from 4 songs to over a hundred missing - the ones from my cd's I could load again but some of them were from itunes downloads and they won't address this problem but have no problem telling me I have to pay to download again - But they are all still on my ipod, just not in my computer.

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