Clownmite's dashboard

A few days ago I posted here stating that songbird wouldn't read off my external hard drive; it imports the media fine but no sound comes out when I play a song. After toying with it some more, I found the root of the problem. If I tell songbird to "Import Media..." from the external, it doesn't work - as I said, it imports the library but no sound comes out when I play a song. However, if I set songbird to monitor my external hard drive's music folder for changes, it will import that media just fine - I can play the songs from my external with no problem. I then tried to "trick" songbird to import all my media files by moving them out of my main music folder on the external and then back in, but again, songbird imported them but wouldn't play any sound.

Why would "import media" fail, but Songbird be ok with automatically monitoring files that get added to the external?

I'm using Songbird 1.2 and also trying 1.4b3, but neither solve the problem. I recently got a Western Digital external hard drive, and when I import my external hard drive library, everything acts normal, except when the file plays, there will be no sound (but lyricsmaster will look up the lyrics, etc). The external library works fine in MediaMonkey, and I know for a fact that the volume is on, since I'm streaming music from youtube/myspace. Also, I need to reinstall songbird and clear my profile, and re-import my internal hard drive music in order to get everything working again (although, it detects the hard drive as a device in 1.4b3, and prompts me to sync stuff to it - perhaps this is the root of the problem?). Any suggestions as to how I can successfully play my music from the external?