Itunes problem/question, lost library, can i relocate it all at once? Options

[jcbass7]

I have about 180 gigs of music on my exernal hard drive and i play it all through itunes. but what tends to happen about once a month or so, if the computer freezes or can't locate my hard drvie it screws everything up in itunes.

when i reconnect the external my itunes library cannot be found. as in if i play a song i get the message

"the song ______ could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?"

so.. i have two options.. i can locate each song (38,000) or i can delete all of my songs in itunes, lose my playlists and reload them all in itunes.. (<this takes a few hours to load them all.)

Is there a way i can reconnect the itunes player to the entire library it used to play?