Spotify will not stream songs that I own, but are stored on an unconnected external drive

[rgnevin]

I store all of my music,, ie itunes, on an external hard drive because my computer's internal one is too small. I do maintain a fairly large non-streaming library but sometimes I don't want to bother connecting my harddrive. For some reason, spotify will not play these songs that I have stored in the unconnected drive. It's like it sees some sort of catalog of my local songs, tries and fails to play them and then will not stream them. I have all settings regarding local music switched to off. This is pretty annoying considering the songs that I like the most are the ones I download which then makes them unplayable through spotify!!! Any thoughts??