I moved my iTunes folder to an external hard drive, now itunes wants to sync all of music to my iPhone twice.

I copied my whole itunes folder to an external drive as id run out of space on my PC. I then changed the location of the folder on iTunes through preferances, but it gave me a warning which i just pressed no/cancel to without reading it, but i didnt realise that then it had not saved the new folder location. When i deleted the original folder, everything dissapeared from itunes meaning i had to reload everything from the new, moved, itunes folder.  This wasnt a problem, except it had lost all memory of playlists and play counts etc. But now, when i try and sync my phone, it tells me there is not enough space on the phone as it must be trying to add all of the music from itunes to the phone as well as what is already on the phone.
Is there a way to upload everything from the phone to itunes, including play counts and playlists?
if not....
How do i just sync my phone to itunes without having to reset the phone and losing photographs, and without itunes trying to add everything twice? 
Last question, why do Apple want to make this so difficult for me? What is wrong with plane old 'click and drag'??
Help me would be greatly apprerciated!! Thanks.

Close iTunes. Click the icon to start it, then press and hold down the left shift key. Keep holding until asked to choose or create a library. Choose the iTunes folder on your external drive. That should bring back all your playlists, ratings, play counts etc. You may have to settle for removing and reloading the media onto the device again. That's not too bad, but what you don't want to have happen is your apps being removed and reloaded as then you can lose settings and data. If that looks likely backup and then restore the device rather than sync it.
If for some reason rebuilding the library the way you did has moved files around then the restored library may have trouble finding things. If so post back and I'll explain what to do...
tt2

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