Moved iTunes media to external drive but...

Hello all,
I followed the instructions for moving my iTunes media folder to an external drive (it had taken up most of my mac book's memory) and at first I was able to access the DVDs and CDs I had ripped but no longer. I can go into the external drive and they are still in their respective folders but only the music and movies I have purchased from the iTunes store show up in my library. Does anyone know how to get my iTunes to accept these into my library without re-importing the into my hardrive?
Thanks much,
Nick

Which instructions? There's lots out there and some are flat wrong.
Close down iTunes. Turn on the external drive and start iTunes again. Does it work? If not try to play a track. When it asks you to find the file it should play, find that file on the external drive. It should ask if you want it to find the rest.
I suspect you have omitted details in describing the situation. Normally iTunes does not lose links to external files unless the drive is not on when iTunes is started. Even then trying to play a file will get it to do a second check and find the drive is really there. You probably have to do something such as renaming the drive, or have a completely corrupt library in order for it to lose track of the media.
Unless you have to keep only media on the external drive it is much better to keep the whole library together. Make a split library portable

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Moved iTunes media to external drive but...

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