ITunes can't locate library on external hard-drive

I have had my iTunes library in a folder on an external E hard drive for some time, and it worked fine.
After I downloaded the latest version of iTunes - in response to a prompt from Apple - it now can't locate any of the tracks. The library is still displayed in full in the iTunes screen, but each track has an exclamation mark next to it, and if I try to play a track, iTunes tells me I have to locate it manually. If I locate a track manually, it plays, but that's obviously not ideal. Also, it won't sync my iPod, but just tells me that the named tracks can't be found.
I looked in the `iTunes music' folder in `My Music' on the C drive, and it has a handful of tracks in it. Those tracks play in iTunes as normal.
Going via Edit-Preferences-Advanced, the `iTunes media folder location' is set as the folder in my E-drive which contains my music library. I had understood that that was all I needed to do in order to enable iTunes to find my library, but I guess there must be another step I've missed.
I suspect that I should be using File-Add Folder to Library, but I'm not sure what the result will be if I do this. Will it copy the files from my E drive onto my C drive (and swallow up all the memory space on my laptop)? Will it duplicate all the tracks in the iTunes display so I have two versions of each track - one with an exclamation mark and one without? Should I delete all the tracks from iTunes before adding the folder?
Thanks for any help you can offer.

Have you assigned E: to the exHD permanently? Because Windows can change USB drive letters on you, if you don't assign them.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307844
That is the most common reason for itunes suddenly unable to find files.

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This is relevant portion of the support document with a bit of editing for clarity.
If iTunes is running, quit iTunes.
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Hello,
I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
Well this backfired big time probably because I did not follow any sort of instructions.
1st I backed up Finder > music > iTunes > iTunesMedia folder to two seperate external hard drives just in case.
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2012EVOL wrote:
Hello,
I tried moving all my media to an external hard drive to make room on my MacBook Pro and just be able to run the media (ie music movies etc) from the external hard drive when it was connected.
Quit iTunes.
Copy the entire /Music/iTunes/ folder to the external. Don't only copy the iTunes media folder.
Hold Option, launch iTunes, select Choose library... and select the iTunes folder on the external.
This is all you need to do.
Everything for iTunes (except the application) is on the external.
2nd I think (this was back in March 2013) I decided to cut/delete the folder Automatically Add to iTunes and moved it to one of my external hard drives (this folder for some reason contained mostly everythiing that was in the iTunes Media folder).
Make a shortcut to this folder on your desktop.
Nothing should be in this folder. When you put a file here, it will get moved by iTunes and added to the library.
The reason it had files in it is because you moved it.

ITunes can't locate library on external hard-drive

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