How do I get iTunes to access music files on external hard drive?

We moved all of our music to an external hard drive. The hd is always on and I connect to it wirelessly. I don't know how to get iTunes to use the library that is on the hard drive, can anyone help me please.

iTunes expects to find its library in the ./Music/iTunes folder. To get iTunes to see music on another drive, you first have to create the library on your internal drive. Once you've done that, you copy the iTunes folder over to your external drive, and redirect iTunes to that drive, using an alias. (I originally did this in Tiger and it continues to work fine in Leopard. I don't know if doing it originally in Leopard would make any difference.)
Note: If your external drive library is already too large for your internal drive, simply use as much of it as you can to create the original library on your internal drive. You can add the rest of it once you've got iTunes looking at the external drive. In this case, remember to name any "iTunes" folder on the external drive to something else, so you don't erase everything in the following procedure.
Load up as much music as you can on your internal drive, making sure it appears in iTunes.
Quit iTunes and copy the iTunes folder from your internal drive to your external drive (be sure you don't erase whatever's already on the external drive). Copying that folder to the root of the external drive is OK.
On your internal drive, rename the 'iTunes" folder to something else (like orig_iTunes) -- or move it out of the Music folder.
Open your external hard drive to the directory containing your iTunes folder.
Cmd-Option drag the iTunes folder from the external hard drive to the internal hard drive Music folder, creating an alias in the internal drive's Music folder.
Launch iTunes. You should now see the music from the external hard drive. If necessary, you can now add back any missing music, and it will automatically create the necessary music and library files inside your iTunes folder on the external drive. Once you've got them all added, you can delete both the orig_iTunes folder, and the folder on your external drive that served as the source for adding your library back in.

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