Itunes and an external hard drive.

I'm using itunes with an external harddrive. Recently, after traveling with my computer, and resyncing upon returning, itunes has been unable to find any of my music. I get the ! next to the songs. I have itunes pointed to the external drive but to no avail?
I have noticed that the external drive just has the mp3's which are not in any folder at all. I would expect that the music would be in a folder named "itunes music"? I don't know if this could be the problem. I'm being really careful because this is the only copy of this music, and I don't currently have a back-up drive big enough to copy them to.
Advice? Help? Can anyone point me to any previous threads?
thanks.

As long as you follow the tip that was linked, you should be OK.
A couple of things:
1. You can't start iTunes when the ext hard drive is not connected. Doing so will result in a library messed up at least a bit, possibly a lot.
2. To safeguard against that little bit, you're going to want to backup your library files occasionally.
3. Somebody (may have been StarDeb55) suggested renaming the iTunes program link to 'check external' as a reminder.
4. If you'd like to still be able to use iTunes for some music, say, like during travel, you can make another user account, and put the desired music there (make sure it's all on the actual laptop).
5. Any ext hard drive sold nowadays should do. USB2 or Firewire.
<hr>
What are the iTunes Library files?

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