Multiple music drive sources messes up song locations in iTunes XML library

I have had my music on an external hard drive for a number of years now. Most of my music library is on that drive (75+GB), but some (including all purchased stuff) is on my local C: drive. I often launch iTunes without my external drive (USB) connected and it has always worked fine with just the music on my local drive. Recently, I connected the external drive to recycle some music on/off my iPod. When I did this, none of the songs on the external drive were available anymore (! shows up). All the music is there, but somehow the iTunes library XML file got screwed up. When I opened up the XML file, it contains all the songs, but their original locations (which were F: drive) now point to my local C: location. I am really upset that iTunes would do this without my intervention. Why can’t it leave file locations alone? Do I need to reload everything again (File->Add Folder)? Are there any shortcuts or ways to prevent this from happening again? This has happen to me a few times of the years. Thanks…
Dell Laptop   Windows XP  

As you've found, if you go ahead and use iTunes when
the external drive isn't connected, iTunes defaults
the library locations back to the C: drive....and
messes up your iTunes library.
Mmmm... actually, that shouldn't happen. I did this same thing for quite a while with no issues. It never moved all my files to a new "location" that way. Only thing that happens was that the library location setting got defaulted to C:, the file pointers themselves remained unchanged.
I don't know how he accomplished this, but you are right that there's no quick fix.

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