Why don't all my iTunes Library songs show up in my music folder

I have a lot of music in iTunes (16,000 plus songs) and they are stored on a LaCie external hard drive. Just recently I discovered that when I click on the file folder where all the music is stored, only files starting with A through B are listed. I can play anything in iTunes ~ nothing is missing, but the list of music when looking at the file with Windows Explorer is incomplete.
The reason this is of concern is because I am trying to back-up my music to DVDs (just for safe keeping in case of a hard drive crash). I have tried to do this several different ways, but nothing has worked. I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that maybe the directory of this large folder holding all my music files is incomplete or corrupted. If I run the Windows Back-up program on the folder, it acts as if only the A - B files are there and only creates a back-up of them. I know the rest exists because I can play them from iTunes. We are talking over 55 gigs of files that are not listed.
I am trying to back-up my library, but I think there is an underlying problem that is causing whatever method I try to fail. Is there anyone out there who can explain what is going on?
My question is two fold:
Why doesn't the list of songs in iTunes match the contents of my music folder?
How can I creat backup DVD's of 60 gigs of music?
Thanks in advance for the help!
Dell Dimension 4600   Windows XP  

Is that not a way to relocate the files? In other words, I have 16,000 plus songs in iTunes and they are all playable. They must be on my external hard drive in the file I have named "Art's Music" (verified by the check you suggested in your first reply). Let's assume that I want to put them all on a different external hard drive (my C drive is not big enough). What steps should I use to relocate my entire library? The plan I had in mind was something I found at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748
Is this going to work?
I am going to borrow a friend's unused hard drive for this and then put it back on my hard drve after I reformat it.
Dell Dimension 4600   Windows XP  

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