Why have my TV shows on my external hard drive disappeared when I've deleted them from my iTunes library?

I am trying to free up space on my internal hard drive (MacBook Air).  I copied my iTunes TV shows onto an external hard drive, following all instructions carefully.  They were all there on the external drive - I opened a few and they played perfectly.  I then went back into iTunes and deleted the shows, then emptied trash.  When I went back into my external hard drive, all the TV shows had disappeared!  Am now in process (yawn) of downloading the shows again onto my laptop, rather defeating my object of freeing up space.  Can anyone tell me what I have done wrong?

Hello Janeburows,
You might have setup your iTunes in such a way that you store your Media files on your External Hard Drive and if that is the situation then whenever you delete anything permanently from your iTunes on your Computer when the External Drive is connected then the Content will get deleted from your External Hard Drive. To verify the Location for the Media files which you have on iTunes do the following.
Open iTunes > Preferences> Advanced and you will see it under iTunes Media Folder Location
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391

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