ITunes are not seeing my external drive as the library

Hi, I'm struggling to get music on my iPhone.
All our music is stored on an external hard drive that we use with our iPods. My wife and I recently got iPhones and we're trying to put some music on them.
iTunes is setup to get the music from the hard drive but for some reason I can not access it any more. My problem is that iTunes are not seeing my external drive as the library.
Here's how I've set my iTunes up:
Edit - Preferences - Advance
iTunes media folder location: J:\Lacie_iTunes (that's where the music is stored)
Now this worked perfect with our iPods but for some reason iTunes is not seeing the music anymore.
In iTunes, if I click on Library and then Music all I get is a screen to either download music (with tutorials) or import CD's (with tutorials).
I'm using iTunes 9 and Windows 7, the iTunes version on my wife's laptop is an older version but I do not think that that is the problem.
Any advice would be MUCH appreciated!

Setting the iTunes Media folder in preferences only moves the content to the external drive. The library database files will still be at the default location of ...\My Documents\My Music\iTunes. When you move the portable drive from one machine to the other you'll have access to the content, but not the database hence you get an empty library and the prompt to add some content.
See this recent post for pointers on how to rearrange the database & media folders so that everything is truly portable. I don't have time just now to rewrite the instructions for your specific drive & folder names but if it's not clear I'll pop by later and write them out again.
tt2

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ITunes are not seeing my external drive as the library

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