Music on my External HD not found by macOS Big Sur
Hi. I moved my music folders from my hard drive to an external hard drive years ago (it was confusing but I received great help from turingtest2). At the time I had macOS El Capitan and the setup changed over the years as I upgraded finally to macOS Mojave. I now have a new iMac running Big Sur. I went to Music Preferences>Files and changed the path to my EHD "iTunes" folder hoping it would work, but no luck. (attached screenshot of music pathway on my EHD that system wouldn't recognize). I then made a new folder on the EHD called "Music" with an enclosed folder named "Media" and I copied all my Artist music files to that location. Thinking it might help, I also copied my "iTunes Library.itl" file there. I went back to Preferences>Files and changed to point to the new location. Still no luck. The only music files Apple will load are the ones I purchased from Apple over the years. The final thing I haven't yet tried is going to the Music toolbar>File>Library>Organize Library>Consolidate... &/or Reorganize.... The reason I didn't try that is that it stated it would put copies of all files in the Media folder and as far as I can tell the files are already in the Media folder and would be duplicated. I'm really at a loss about what to do next and now I'm sitting with all my music files in two different locations on my EHD taking up twice as much space. I've also attached a screenshot of the 2nd location pathway of "Music" on my EHD. I would really appreciate any help.
iMac 27″, macOS 11.5