Lost music and made a mess of everything, what do I do now?

Question

Ok, now I'm in even more trouble. I tried to download iDump, once done, I had a bit of trouble trying to copy the tunes from my iPod. I did eventually work it out (sort off). I'm only new to computers and iPod/iTunes. My iTunes purchased music as well as CD copied music was initially saved onto my c drive. I later tried to move iTunes to my external hard drive. My computer was recognising the iTunes on my c drive but not external hard drive. This is what I did: prior to downloading iDump I uninstalled iTunes and restarted all over again, but this time saving iTunes to my external hard drive right from the beginning. I did have the music on my iPod and the music was successfully saved on my external hard drive. I then needed to transfer my music from my iPod to iTunes - this is where I downloaded iDump. After some fiddling around, I managed to get my music onto the iTunes Library. I thought it would be safe to sync however, I have now no music on my iPod. Some music is in the iTunes Library however most of it has an exclamation mark against it. Some of the music in my iTunes library (38songs)are repeated but without an exclamation mark and I have been able to drag these back into my iPod. If I try and play or drag the other songs to my iPod, I get a message telling me that the original file could not be found. All my music was saved to my external hard drive but now some music is missing and/or not recognised in iTunes. I really don't know how to resolve this or where to start. All I know is that I have made a huge mess of this and I am left with only a handful of music. Any instructions or guidance on what to do now would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
(Its a long post, but I need all the help I can get!)

Answer 1

Ok, I was going a touch nutty, trying to work out what to do. I just kept at it trying everything I could think off because I wasn't getting any replies to my question.
This is what I did:
I thought I had lost my music after using iDump. Though it wasn't showing up in my iPod I had successfully saved it on my external hard drive prior to performing my mess.
With the music that was already saved on my hard drive, I just moved that folder to my desktop and renamed it 'DONT TOUCH'
I performed a search on my computer and on my external hard drive. I searched for anything that ended in: .m4p
Once I found all these files I placed them in one folder and saved it on my external hard drive.
Then I went into iTunes and made sure I had the latest update. All my music was showing up with exclamation marks. (iTunes simply wasn't recognising where my music was located).
I deleted all the songs from iTunes then made sure that I had the latest update again. I also made sure that 'enable disk use' was ticked. (You find it in the 'summary' tab at the bottom towards the left where it says 'options' in iTunes)
Then in iTunes, I clicked on 'file' and then 'add folder to library'. When clicking on 'add folder to library' a window pops up where you browse for your music folder. Once you find where its located click ok.(On my computer my music was saved in my external hard drive 'My Book E:')
Then from what I remember, my music was back in iTunes so all I had to do was get it back onto my iPod. Then I shut down my computer and performed a viral scan of my whole computer.
Finally I clicked on the 'sync' button once my iPod was connected to iTunes and presto! - all my music was back on my iPod and all the music in iTunes had no more %!#*ing exclamation marks.
I also made sure that from this point on, all my music which I purchased through iTunes was to be automatically saved to my external hard drive. I did this by:
* In iTunes click on the 'Edit' tab
* Go to 'Preferences.....'
* Another window should pop up - click on the 'Advanced' tab
* Now click on the 'General' tab - this is where you will find the iTunes music folder location. Simply changed it to whatever you want it to be now. (I set mine to my external hard drive:'My Book E:' instead of my computer.
Lost count of how many times I checked and rechecked that my iPod and iTunes where in working order, I finally deleted the folder named 'DONT TOUCH' which I initially saved on my desktop.
Hope this helps you.