How can I consolidate my music library with an external hard drive?

I have moved my entire music library onto an external hard drive. However, when I want to copy a new CD at work, I often copy the music onto my laptop then have to manually transfer it to the external hard drive at home.
I thought that "consolidate" library would do this automatically for me. The problem is when I disconnect the external, the next time I open iTunes it tells me "The folder containing the iTunes Library cannot be found and is required. Please choose or create a new iTunes Library." So I choose the iTunes library that resides on my laptop in the Music folder. When I go back to using my external music folder and try to consolidate my library nothing happens. I would like to use the "consolidate library" command to copy the music from my laptop to my external hard drive. Please help!

Drag it to the internal drive.
If it contains the iTunes database files, launch iTunes with the Shift key held down, click on Choose Library, and navigate to it.
If it doesn't, drag it from there into the open iTunes application window.
(108123)

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