Itunes cant find my library in external HD

Ok Gang...
I consolidated my library and moved it to an external HD. I changed the advanced setting info to find my new external HD. But when I open Itunes it comes up blank no music library. Help How do I correct this problem. How do I tell Itunes to find my external HD and open the library?

There's been a few threads about this recently. Where we've all come unstuck is that even if we can get Itunes to look in the right place for the music (by consolidating, or dragging the files into the library) ... IT STILL LOSES ALL THE USER-GENERATED INFORMATION.
That is to say; you'll find your music again, but all the album art, ratings, playlists and so on that you made yourself will be gone gone gone.
No-one so far has come up with a solution to this. Several of us have found that even if we input it all again, it's lost the next time we connect the External.
If anyone has found a solution, PLEASE tell us, because this problem makes the entire ITunes experience time-consuming and pointless. You might as well go back to having a big pile of CDs on your bedroom floor!

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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
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Hi guys,
Im hoping someone can help me as im currently puling my hair out...
Just bought myself a new laptop after my old system got a virus, i followed apples guid to backing up my music to an external hard drive and can confirm all my music is safe, however upon following instructions to restore the itunes library for use on this pc, i have hit a brick wall, it seems you need aa degree to get itunes to work correctly..
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I went into Time Machine and restored iTunes from a few weeks ago. Very odd though... It restored all of the music files (about 12.5 GB) to the standard iTunes folder on my internal hard drive, but only 1.63GB showed up in the iTunes Application itself. I went into preferences and changed the folder destination to the one where the song files are, and even restarted iTunes with option held down and 'chose' the same folder, but no joy. The location looks like this: /Users/DJG/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music
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I tried to set up a new library for my old ipod nano so i could update songs on it however when i tried to import songs from a cd it crashed and i had to end task therefor not getting to sync the new songs with ipod nano. now i cant find old library

However during the process of adding new songs itunes crashed and i had to end task therefor not getting the chance to sync the new songs onto ipod nano. later when i plugged in my current ipod touch all my songs have disappeared and i cant find the original itunes library i had for it! is there anyway to get it back? i have tried pressing shift when opening itunes but still cant find the original itunes that i had!!

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Why is it so hard to get iTunes to find my library?

<rant>I don't understand why it's so difficult to get iTunes to find an existing library after a move. I wish I had left this alone from the beginning. Had I known it would be this hard, I wouldn't have done this.</rant>
I have tried to move my iTunes folder from beneath my home folder to the root. After following some instructions to get this moved (I forget the link), iTunes thinks my songs are in the trash. I verified this by looking at the iTunes Library.xml file, and saw the songs linked to the songs in the trash.
So now that I've deleted my trash, all of my songs are showing up with exclamation points, saying it can't find the original song. If I locate an individual song in the new folder, it works fine. But I have thousands of songs, and have little interest in doing this for my whole library.
I've tried manually updating the iTunes Library.xml file, pointing them to the proper location, but I've figured out iTunes doesn't really use this file -- it uses the binary "iTunes Library" (with no extension) file, which I can't edit (thanks Apple).
I've also tried the option+start trick to point it to the new library (at several different points along the way), and it still thinks my songs are in the trash, I believe.
I can only assume that this has something to do with digital rights, and them not making it easy to copy music, but for us legit people, this is really a pain.
So is there a way to get this back? Or, am I left to wiping out my library, and having iTunes import my songs from scratch, and lose all of my metadata and album art?
Also once again, why is this so hard anyway? Has Apple not seen the tons of blogs and discussions on this very topic enough to warrant actually addressing this?
Thanks in advance.

Thank Chris and Diane.
After looking into this more, it looks like after transferring my media folder, I also moved my iTunes library to the root following this article:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-library-to -a-new-hard-drive/
Somehow, something got missed (though I'm almost positive I followed that first Apple support article). Anyway, my fix was this:
1) Move my iTunes media folder back to the exact trash location it thought the songs should be in, and confirmed that the songs were once again found through iTunes.
2) Follow the Apple support article, relocated my iTunes Media folder from the trash to the desired folder in the root
3) Moved my iTunes Library back to my home folder following the iLounge article above (move physical files, then option-open iTunes and point the library to the new location).
Once I did this, everything is as I wanted it.
By the way, Chris, the reason I want my iTunes in the root of my external rather than under the Home/Shared, is because I want my songs on the external, and my Shared folder is on my internal. I want to keep all my large files on my external.
Also, Diane, what I meant by digital rights issue, I didn't mean this was the cause of my problem, but rather speculating this was the reason Apple made it so hard to relocate your media files. Again, that was just speculation, I obviously have no way of knowing. It just seems unreasonably hard to relocate your iTunes songs (or even just tell iTunes where they are after it lost them) because Apple seems to try to make users' lives easier, not harder.
Anyway, thanks again for the help.

Itunes cant find my library in external HD

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