HELP!~ new mac user with MAJOR external hard drive/iTunes problems

Hi everyone,
I hope you can help me out. I just got my new Powerbook Pro 2.0. It is really nice, but I am having a **** of a time with iTunes. I had an old Sony Viao and my friend turned me on to mac. So here I am, new computer and new 80G iPod. I have 120G of music on my external hard drive that played music right from the HD on my Vaio with no problems (until I upgraded to iT7.0, then the music ran choppy, but thats another issue). No, thinking that the Mac and iTunes will work perfectly together, I plugged in my External HD, turned on all the equipment, the mac finds the HD and I can see the music. Good. So, I change the location on the preferences to find the music on the ExHD and nothing. Then, I read all the forums and all and try EVERYTHING, moving the .xml file to the dektop, restarting iTunes, changing the location again, NOTHING works. I am about as frustrated as I can be. With over 26,000 songs that I cannot listen to.... I am about to regret this discision to get the mac. Any ideas? I also tried copy the files in the iTunes folder on the mac to the folder on the ExHD, but i don't know how on mac (there is no copy and paste command when you right click the mouse). I know my frustration is because I am new and dont know all the tricks yet.
I wish I could just call my buddy, but I am in Afghansitan fighting the taliban and he is in Hawaii. Any help is GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks
MBP 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.8) Brand New Mac user.......

Select your ext HD and do a key board command - CMD+I (Get Info - File Menu). Under the Ownership & Permissions tab - do you have read and write access? If not give yourself that access. You may be prompted for your admin password.
If your ext HD is the same one you used with the Vaio then I am thinking your ext HD is formated as a FAT32 and not a NTFS. Mac can read NTFS but not write to a NTFS format disk. If it is FAT32 then Mac can read and write. If it is a HFS+ format (Mac format) then there is no issue of read and write unless the disk is locked.
To copy files from one HD to anorther on a Mac - all you need to do is select and drag to the new location.
Check the Help Menu's of iTunes and the Finder. There is wealth of info built into your Mac OSX.
MJ

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* I'm running on Mac OSX 10.4.11.
* I have the most recent release 13" Macbook and it has plenty of memory left.
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HELP!~ new mac user with MAJOR external hard drive/iTunes problems

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