iTunes shut down, now Library is damaged

hey there,

my iTunes just shut down by itself, so i restarted my machine. when i restarted iTunes, it said that "cannot import iTunes Library because it is not the right kind of file". so when it did open up, it said that it was using "iTunes Library (damaged)". now 20 gigs or so of music is missing and all of my playlists are gone. any ideas? im not really worried about losing music as i back up pretty frequently. just curious as to why this would happen and if i can ever get the old library to work again. thanks in advance.

specs: dual 1.8 g5 powermac, os x.4.11, itunes version 7

my system was backed up last night, so i can just import that itunes library. should i drag it to my machine? if i import it straight from the back up drive will it always put new songs on the backup drive and not my hd?

THere should be 2 files

iTunes Library.xml and iTunes Library

the iTunes Library.xml is a back-up

back-up both files, then delete the old library, open up itunes and try and import the xml file to see if that one is ok

edit - no iTunes will behave as it has done before and will not put music on any other disk

hey thanks for the tip. it totally worked. i had to use the files from my backup drive, but all my playlists are back and so are all the songs. thanks again.