Files disappear when played - ARGH!

I had several dvds converted to play on my ipod. The external hard drive is where I stored them, since my laptop doesn't have the space. itunes advanced properties was set-up for the external drive's use. I opened the H drive movies with itunes and noticed after they had played in itunes, they disappeared from the original folder that I put them in! The "movies" are now somewhere within the itunes library (likely renamed so I'll never find them manually) now but I have no idea why they were moved from the original folder or where the insane program put the files. I CANNOT find the movies to watch it through another program that is not so insanely complicated to use- the movies are now gone!
I had to buy a 250Gb external hard drive to manage the music, since there's not enough room on the computer's hard drive. For some reason, itunes decided to start using my C drive one day, instead of the H drive, originally designated as MY choice (maybe I opened itunes one day without the external hd on?). I noticed the exclamation points on the music and panic!! I started trying to backup music, for fear of losing it. I re-designated the H drive again and did some hacking to backup the songs saved off the ipod and into another backup- then imported the backup folder and lost all play lists as a result. I'm NOW afraid to syc.
How can you backup your files if you don't have control over which drive you designated as the sync or even where the files are placed? Why does itunes remove files from folders when you play them? I've never been so confused by any software in my life as I have with itunes. I'm not able to enjoy the music comfortably and am always in fear of losing what I have. I've turned into a music manager instead of a music lover. The program has a mind of it's own...totally alien to what I want it to do. ARGH! No way I'm ever going to update the software again either. I cannot manage the learning curve on what I've got now, after over a year.
Message was edited by: btos

Please see the thread "10.4.x Finder bug with AFP mounted home directory during a copy" (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=309002)
for a workaround.
This seems to bee the same problem.

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Hi Craig and Welcome to Apple Discussions....
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Try showing the import options and make sure the crop option you want to use is one that is not grayed out.

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Hi ATR
I know there is only you that helps us Adobe users with problems!!
I have now got Photoshop 12 and premiere Elements 12 set up yey!! so now I want to start my editing
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Morning ATR
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Files disappear when played - ARGH!

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