Itunes on an external hard drive problem

I've operated my itunes library from an external hard drive successfully for some time now, usually keeping the hard drive connected to the PC. I recently removed the hard drive to use with my laptop. When I reconnected the external hard drive itunes won't load. I get a message which says: "itunes cannot run bacause some its required filesare missing. Please reinstall itunes" Not sue whether to do this I don't want to lose my music files.
I've connected the external drive to the laptop and can see that the itunes library is still there. However. when I use shift and itunes and choose that library the music list comes up but none of it's there. When selected I get the message "the song could not be found would you like to locate it" with the dreaded ! by the name of the song.
Not sue what to do??
Help Please

If the library won't work when it has a different drive letter one approach would be to change settings in Windows disk managment to restore the original letter.
If the library is all there, but has broken links, another approach would be my FindTracks script.
If you want to be able to swap the library back & forth then see making your split library portable.
tt2
Message was edited by: turingtest2

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Yeah, I gave the new drive the letter Z, so there shouldn't have been any conflicts there. I also tried your other suggestion, and while the computer recognized my external hard drive, it didn't seem to make any difference once I plugged in the iPod again.
I've been wrestling with this for days now. I've tried changing the drive letters for both the external hard drive and my iPod several times (but no matter what, the iPod always seems to take F when it's unplugged and then plugged back in). I've tried restoring the iPod on multiple occasions. I've tried reinstalling all my USB drivers. I've consolidated my music library on several occasions (I now have two identical libraries on my external hard drive), yet annoyingly, iTunes seems to keep switching file paths away from the external hard drive and back to their original locations on the C drive. I'm trying to free up internal hard drive space, not house 30 gigs of media on it. That's what this new external hard drive is for.
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Drag your iTunes folder with all its subfolders to your external drive. Restart iTunes with the option key held down, then navigate to the new library on the external drive.
[Discussion: Moving itunes library to external hard drive|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=9127522] - link to article on moving your library to an external drive and warning tips about having drive switched on when you start up itunes.
[ilounge.com: Transferring your iTunes Library|http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/moving-your-itunes-l ibrary-to-a-new-hard-drive/48] - Good background but for the simplified version read: [http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2362775]
[How to redirect your iPhoto and ITunes files to an external harddrive|http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6058202]

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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751?viewlocale=en_US
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First, I followed the instructions on this site for Backing up itunes library by copying to a external hard drive.........
That's what it does. It makes a backup copy of the iTunes folder. iTunes will not use that folder or do anything to that folder.
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Do you mean after you followed the instructions and copied \Music\iTunes folder to the external drive and then deleted something from iTunes, it deleted it from the external drive also?
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This too didn't help as the media folder is not the problem, its the library as its 735kb!
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Hi Ramón:
You wrote:
Creating a new folder doesn't seem to be the way to go since all of my music is already on the external hard drive.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4527
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This is where iTunes stores backups for different operating systems: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4946
I do not use a Windows machine, have a Windows Vista Dell I rarely startup now. But, from what I remember with Win boxes is, you will have to create on the external hard drive a file system like that one iTunes normally uses, and then in the iTunes preferences or control panel edit the location for the storage to specify the name of the external hard drive, or its letter code, with the name of that file system you created on the exernal drive.
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I recommend you keep everything inside the iTunes folder.
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This is all you need to do. Everything will work normally.
You can delete now /Music/iTunes/ folder on the internal.

Itunes on an external hard drive problem

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