Having difficulties with transferring iTunes. HELP!

Question

I had to transfer my iTunes Library to my external hdd because I didn't have enough room on my laptop for it. It worked fine after I had transferred it and was using that library on my desktop. I never transferred or copied it to my desktop, I just used it via the hdd. But yesterday, when I went to get into my library, there weren't any songs in it. Then I went looking through my hdd to locate my library, I found a couple back up libraries but not my most recent library. When I opened the backups, they all had the exact same songs with the exact same date added. It wouldn't be so bad to just have these backup libraries if it hadn't been that I have added about 3,000 songs since that date added. Now they're all just on my iTouch and I'm trying to figure out how to get them into my Library without syncing and resetting my iTouch. My question is, how do I get all my songs and movies from my iTouch into my Library without resetting my iTouch to factory settings??
Any and all advice/help is greatly appreciated!!!!
~Felicia

Answer 1

For instance, the size of the ITunes folder is different, and inside the folder some files are not there, and all the music is not there either (in the external HD copied location).
Then the first thing to do would be to consolidate your new iTunes library as well: Open your new iTunes Library in iTunes and
Open iTunes Preferences:
Mac: Choose iTunes > Preferences.
Click Advanced.
Make sure the option to "Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library" is selected.
Click OK.
Choose File > Library > Organize Library.
Then check if now your music is included in your new Library.
To see where iTunes stores a song, select the song in the iTunes Browser and control-click (or right-click) it and from the pop up menu select "Show in Finder".
If you see that the songs are inside the new Library, you can delete them from your old library.
The structure of your Library depends on your iTunes Version, so I can't tell you where to look - please post the version of iTunes you are using and the OS: