Connecting ipod to computer causes itunes library to disappear

Question

I manage my music on my ipods manually. I have all my music and videos stored on an external hard drive. When I connect an ipod (we have 3) to add music or video files itunes looses my library (? show up saying itunes cannot locate the file, when looking for the file all 42 GB of my music folders are empty). Connecting an ipod makes the files disappear(in My Computer all the folders are there, but no files show up). If I close itunes, shutdown computer and restart itunes, all the music is there and plays fine in itunes. Problem only occurs when I connect an ipod and try to add files to it. I have tried reinstalling itunes, no change. Since my EHD was under warranty, I exchanged it, no change in this problem, extremely frustrated.

Answer 1

I notice your sig says you have a Sony Vaio. The Sony Media Watcher program is known to cause conflicts of deleting itunes libraries - not your specific problem, I understand, but I wonder if this is some new fun feature that is somehow related?
If you have ever run the Sony media software, it is "watching" the itunes folders. Try telling it not to watch the itunes folder temporarily and see if things work better. Or even uninstall it, considering Sony came out with that fab rootkit ; 0
I don't have a vaio, so can't suggest much more, but there are posts from other vaio owners in this topic
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1800551
Near the bottom are the posts about telling it not to watch folders; the posts on uninstalling come before that.