How can I restore my library that was erased off external drive....

I just accidently erased 90% of my itunes library that was reading off an external drive. The last 10% was recently purchases music that I downloaded directly to my laptop hard drive and remains intact (makes sense?). Basically I wiped out the external drive that my 90% library read to.
I was able uncover hidden files off my ipod and inturn copy my library back to the external drive but the big question is - is there a way to restore all this without having to start over Itunes? Can I reimport it off the external drive from the ipod copyover? One thing I can't do is copy it back onto the laptop hard drive because there's nowhere near enough space. Thanks for you help!

OK first thing you might want to do is read this post of mine from the other day...
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6296361&#6296361
because, well I am too lazy to type much of it again.
But the part that really is for you is about half way down, just above the link where it starts with "If it was me, " which is what you want to do. In your case, you would use the "Add to library..." command twice. Once to add all the files from the external, and then again to grab all the ones off the internal, if you want everything located in one location. You can then remove the ones from your internal AFTER you verify that they made it to the external ok.
As noted in that post at the end, but worth repeating, doing it with that method keeps everything all together (database files, media files, etc) in a single folder for your library rather than your database files on the internal and your media on the external or spread across both drives. If you ever need to move the library or want to use your library on other computers, you can simply move the folder or the entire drive and use the above instructions to open your library.
Patrick

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