ITunes unable to locate music files saved on external drive

Hi all,
This is proabably something incredibly simple but my iTunes was installed on to my laptop wih music added till my memory was all used up.
So I bought an external drive, and re-added all my music saving it to the external drive, my iTunes however remained installed directly on my laptop.
This worked fine initially as long as my external drive was selected in the Preferences section of my Itunes, but recently all my albums are available but it says that Itunes is unable to locate the files, even though none of them have been lost or deleted from the external drive.
Ive tried everything I can think of - does anyone know how to rectify this?
Thanks....

I switched computers and tried to reload all my backed up itunes files. It loaded the files fine the first time. After I logged off the files disappeared from my Itunes. Apple tech told me to add itunes folder to library. It worked fine until i logged off again. I tried it several times because my files never stayed on itunes. Finnaly I added two new CD's into my library and I went to file Libray and I entered consolidated Library. This brought everything I had before and then some to my itunes library. I logged off, shutdown and even hibernated and my files still remain. I was able to create playlist, my movies, podcast, there all there. Hope this helps.

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