I Tunes & External Hard Drive

Can someone answer this question? I have my iTunes music file on an external hard drive, and it is working well (Mac Power book and La Cie Ext Hard Drive.) I know that I must be careful to have the ExHD connected each time before I launch iTunes, or the computer will launch a new iTunes which will block access to the ExHD music file when that is reconnected.
The question is this. Let's say I have made that mistake, and a new iTunes is there blocking. How do I recover from this situation? Rick Ward
17 inch iMac, and 12 inch Powerbook G4   Mac OS X (10.4.1)  

Thanks for the response, but it doesn't work. I am sure that changing the location in the "Advanced Preferences" will make any newly imported song go to the exHD, but it doesn't, by itself connect the computer's iTunes to the music in the exHD and make the play list work.
Deleting or renaming the iTunes Library folder in the computer and copying over to it the one from the exHD, brings up the playlist, but the play list is not connected to the music unless you look for each song individually and bring it over.
I have made it work once, but don't really know how that happened

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