Changing iTunes Library to Another Pre-existing Library

*First some background-* My wife and I each have our own Apple laptops, and we repurposed her old HP PC as an iTunes server to house copies of all our media and sync with the Apple TV. Our laptops each have only our own music collections while the PC's library contains all of the music from both our personal libraries as well as all of our video content (which we do not keep on our laptops due to size constraints.) The PC's library is housed on a Drobo via a DroboShare. The PC is old and terribly slow, however, and watching content via the Apple TV that is streaming from the PC is an oftentimes painful experience. We have decided to ditch the PC and make my laptop the main iTunes repository.
*Now The Question-* What is the best way to make the larger, all-inclusive iTunes/Drobo library my laptop's library without losing all of my playlists and ratings that I have accumulated over the years that live in my laptop's library. If I change my storage location under Preferences and then Consolidate, will all of the media I don't have currently in my library get added, or will my library still only see what it knew about before, just stored in a new location now?
I apologize for the length, but I am trying to provide as much data as I can. I don't want to lose my ratings or playlists from my library, any media from the Drobo, or hours of my life trying to manually fix everything should I mess it up from taking a wrong turn somewhere. Thanks in advance!

You missed 'Point 14':
After the folder has been copied, locate your original iTunes Music folder, and drag it to the Trash or Recycle Bin. Note: Don't remove the iTunes 4 Music Library files that may be in the same location as the iTunes Music folder.
If you deleted the 'iTunes Library.itl' file from that folder, then you deleted the iTunes database file that keeps track of all your song references, Playlists and some attributes. See:What are the iTunes Library files?
Can you recover this file from the ExHD? Or maybe the Recycle Bin? Place it back into the 'iTunes' folder under the 'My Music' folder.
If not, you'll have to 'Rebuild' your Library from the ExHD's music files. It's a simple 'File=>Add Folder' from within iTunes, but you will lose your Playlists, Ratings, Play Counts and Last Played attributes.

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    *PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE POST BEFORE ATTEMPTING THIS PROCESS. IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, BUT IT IS FAIRLY INVOLVED AND ENTAILS SOME RISK. THERE ARE SOME WARNINGS AT THE END.*
    ||
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    Move iTunes media (music, videos, podcasts) to another folder and update the iTunes library to reference all the media from that new folder.
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    When the location of iTunes media files changes (files are moved, folder name/drive letter changes), iTunes cannot automatically locate these files. iTunes entries can be updated to point to the new location one at a time or by deleting all entries and re-adding all files. Updating one at a time is time consuming, and deleting and re-adding causes a large amount of metadata (play count, date added, rating, etc) to be lost.
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    - *Move iTunes media files to new location:* This may be changing which drive is used to store iTunes media files, renaming a folder, or whatever. This can be done for the whole library or for only part of it.
    - *Export the iTunes library:* In iTunes, select File -> Library -> Export Library... and save the file somewhere for editing (Desktop is a good location).
    - *Open Library.xml in a decent text editor:* Notepad is not recommended, since Library.xml can be very large. Some free options include PSPad, Notepad++, Smultron, and Text Wrangler.
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    - - - Example: Find: <key>Location</key><string>file://localhost/C:/Data/iTunes/
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    - - - Note 1: This step may require adjustment to match your situation. You may want to count how many files need to be updated and make sure that the find/replace only changes that many or edit them by hand if the location of all files have not been changed. It shouldn’t be difficult, but it may require some thought.
    - - - Note 2: Music, TV Shows, Movies, and Podcasts are stored in this file, so make sure to account for all media types. If the location of all types didn’t change, the find/replace strings will need to take that into account.
    - *Remove all modified media entries from iTunes:* For any of the files that are being moved, the associated metadata must be removed from iTunes to avoid having duplicates in iTunes. This can be done by selecting all entries in iTunes that will be modified, right-clicking the entries, and choosing “Delete”. After confirming that you want to remove the selected item from your iTunes library, make sure to choose to keep the file in the iTunes Media folder if prompted.
    - *Import Library.xml:* Import the modified Library.xml by selecting File -> Library -> Import Playlist... and selecting the modified Library.xml in the file open dialog that appears. Depending on the size of the iTunes Library, this could take a while (10 minutes or more).
    - *Test results:* Locate a file in iTunes that has been moved, right-click on the file, and choose “Get Info”. The “Location:” field should indicate the new location of the file. Close the Info dialog and try to play the file. If the file plays, the process was successful.
    ||
    ||
    _*DISCLAIMERS/ADDITIONAL NOTES*_
    - I tried this out a couple of times, and it worked fine for me. I can’t guarantee it will work for everyone, but I thought I’d share since I couldn’t find instructions for this situation anywhere else.
    - If the process fails, you SHOULD be able move the iTunes media files back to their old location and restore the backed up iTunes library data to the iTunes folder to restore your previous configuration.
    - I wouldn’t recommend attempting this if you don’t feel comfortable with backing up your iTunes library data and editing the XML file.
    - I don’t know if this process will preserve whether videos and podcasts have been played or if it will preserve the play position where items were last paused.
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    - This process duplicates playlists, probably because you are importing your entire library again. I just deleted the duplicates when I was done.

    If all the media is on one drive and you're not letting iTunes manage it then you can achieve the "portable" status simply by moving the library files high enough up the tree, i.e. the root of the drive if necessary, letting iTunes know where the nominal iTunes media folder is and then moving the library to the new drive keeping the relative paths from the library files to each distinct set of media folders unchanged. Personally I don't like iTunes cutting my file & folder names short, but the advantages of a portable library mean that I'm quite happy to organise my media inside the iTunes Media folder, albeit largly on my own terms. Indeed all my non-iTunes multimedia is now also organised in the same folders. The only media files iTunes organises, temporarlily, are rips & downloads apart from active Podcasts whose folder names I leave unchanged. Everything else gets sorted just the way I want it - full length filenames, different character replacements, folder art etc. I used to do it by hand, deleting, tweaking & reimporting, but these days I use a custom script which does it all automatically - renaming files just as I want and reconnecting iTunes to the newly moved file so that no iTunes-only metadata is lost.
    There are similar XML-editing how-tos elsewhere on the web, I just wanted to make the point that there may still sometimes be a way to achieve the desired result which isn't quite as complicated but nevertheless leaves the user fully in control of their file structure.
    Anyway, at least you took the trouble to find a method that works for you first. There are sadly too many tales of woe on these boards from people who've moved all their files around first only to discover that they've broken their libraries and can't work out how to undo the damage.
    tt2

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