Itunes Library New Internal Hard Drive

2009 iMac 27' OSX 10.6.8
I bought an external hard and moved the iTunes media folder location and all media via Preference/Advanced/Change... blah blah blah. Worked great.no problems and all new iTunes media downloads and media additions were going to my external hard drive... all was well. . However, shortly thereafter my internal hard drive failed (I had no other back up other than just iTunes media). After Apple gets done installing a new hard drive, what is the process to get the computer to recognize that iTunes library and all the media is on the external hard drive and all downloads to continue going to the external hard drive?

If you did it the way you said you did it then your "library" (namely the library.itl file) was still on the internal drive and only the media was on the external drive. This is not the way to move a library to the external drive but it's too late to say that now. So, your library file (with playlists, ratings, playcount) as such is lost unless you had a separate backup. All you have left are the media files and you'll need to start with a brand new library file. If you hold the option key down while starting Tunes you can tell it to make this in a folder called "iTunes" on the external drive, so in future it will all be together.
Realize it could just have well have been your external that failed completely and you would have lost all your media. I know in my case many of these can never be replaced. You should consider getting a second external drive large enough to back up your computer and your media drive. You have been warned!
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html

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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364

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lksj wrote:
How can I move my backed up Itunes library from my external hard drive to my new internal hard drive? I went through the steps listed on the support page, and imported the .xml playlist that I moved to the desktop. Now all my playlists (names only) are on Itunes, but there is no content. Help?
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Eels290776 wrote:
if my external hard drive is not connected to either of my machines, and I download something onto my iMac and then something different onto my Macbook, where are my machines going to be storing the new downloaded media
when the drive is not connected, +iTunes media folder location+ will default back to <MacintoshHD>/users/<yourname>/music/iTunes/iTunes music (or media)
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note only one iTunes can access the iTunes library @ a time !
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You missed 'Point 14':
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