Imported CD's not appearing in itunes

Question

i have iTunes installed on a windows laptop, the iTunes library is located on an external HDD, I can import songs from HDD to library no problem, but what I cannot do is import CDs . I import as directed and it says it has imported , the track list appears and so does artwork in recently added , but next to the tracks a ! Appears when I click it asks to locate track ? I look into the HDD to see if its there but no folder /file is created , I've searched all folders both pc and HDD but no trace of songs /album can be found.
itunes match is off, genius off, I've logged in /out , rebuilt library twice but still I cannot import new cd music ?
DOes anyone have the solution ? I've been thru the forum and found lots of conflicting answers but nothing concrete

Answer 1

Select a song from the recently-imported CD (with "!" next to it), right-click and select Get-Info.  iTunes will respond with a dialog like this:
Click No (there seems to be a bug in iTunes 12.0.1.26 as you actually have to click No twice).  When the song info editor opens, select the File tab (iTunes 12) or Summary tab (iTunes 11).  You should see the file location looking something like this:
in iTunes 12, or this:
in iTunes 11.  What is shown after "file://localhost/" in your case (i.e., the equivalent of "K:\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\Adagio Blue\Ordovician Fission\01 Glaciate.mp3" in this example)?  This will tell you the media file location that iTunes has in its database - i.e., where iTunes "thinks" the file is.
Report back what you find and we'll go from there ...