How can I stop iTunes from losing or deleting MY music?

I have a large CD collection. I have downloaded them to iTunes over a period of years. When I go looking for a particular song, it is often missing. I have been checking my iTunes library lately and much of the music I downloaded from MY CD collection is missing. Why does iTunes lose or delete music I have legally purchased. NOTE: I don't burn a lot of CDs. I have half a dozen playlists for CDs I have burned one time for my personal use. I have one playlist for my iPod and one for the music on my phone. Is this causing a problem? What is going on?

That's odd.  I have been using iTunes since before it was even iTunes (Soundjam) and I lose a file about once a year. Even then I can't say it wasn't something I did. Based on the information we have I would say it is anything from clumsy fingers to serious hard drive corruption.  Despite many conspiracy theory posts to the contrary I have a hard time believing Apple programmers spliced in code to randomly select a non-Store track to delete at set intervals.
First, is the actual media file gone, or is it only the track entry in iTunes which in reality is nothing more than a pointer to a media file?  Look in you iTunes Folder > Media etc.

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