How do I keep music on an external hard drive?

I know there are some iTunes geniuses out there that can help me! I want to keep my music on an external hard drive (USB port kind) and have iTunes automatically pull music from it and dump new stuff in it. However, I am having continuous problems. Would someone please give me instructions? Or directions to where I can find instructions? Thank you SO SO much.

If you are running iTunes 6 or wish to keep the library files on your internal drive, see:
iTunes: Moving Your iTunes Music Folder
IMPORTANT: do not delete the iTunes folder or the preference files it contains from your boot hard drive; delete ONLY the tracks themselves (i.e. the contents of the old iTunes Music folder).
If you have iTunes 7, then you can use the procedure above, or you can just drag the entire iTunes folder (the entire folder, not just the iTunes Music folder) to your desired location. Then hold down the Shift key in Windows while launching iTunes. You'll be given a dialog box where you can select the iTunes library you want to use. Navigate to and select the iTunes folder in it's new location.
In either case, don't delete the tracks from the old location until you've confirmed that they're working correctly from the external drive.
Forum Tip: Since you're new here, you've probably not discovered the Search feature available on every Discussions page, but next time, it might save you time (and everyone else from having to answer the same question multiple times) if you search a couple of ways for a topic, both in the relevant forums, in the User Tips Library and in the Apple Knowledge Base before you post a question.
Regards.

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