Best way to import music from PC/External HD

Question

Hi there, thanks in advance for any help here.
I have a a lot of music and have spent the last few days getting it all into one location on an external HD. I have placed my iTunes folder in my Music Folder on External HD, and then dropped all of my music directly into iTunes-->iTunes Media-->Music
There is another folder above the Music Folder which is called Automatically Add to iTunes.....should i have put my tracks in there for them to show in iTunes? Or is there another way to get everything to show up in my iTunes player?
And what is the best way to get all my music organised as this i something i have never been good a which means i don't really end up listening to any of it!!

Answer 1

To answer the second question first, iTunes will look at the tracks and create library entries. It gets track information from the tags in the song files. It does not make use of folder names in this process, and thus does not care how many are in a folder.
Per your first question, once the files are in the iTunes Media folder, you can use the iTunes command File > Add Folder to Library, and navigate to the music folder.
I strongly suggest that you do this on a small subfolder first, so you can see how it works, before aiming at the whole folder.
As far as organizing: once the songs are in your iTunes library, you can always find what you want by going to iTunes first. However, if you want to have them in regular Artist/Album folders, you can (at any time) enable the iTunes Advanced preference to "Keep iTunes Media folder organized."