How to back up to External Hard Drive b4 reinstalling OS?

I have WXP Home version. ITunes v7. I have done a lot of work cleaning up my music file info on ITunes. Now my OS needs to be reinstalled. How can I back up the many hours of work I've done onto my external hard drive? ITunes looks for a cd drive as I do not desire to back up to. That's what I bought the XTRNL HD for.
Any help would be appreciated.
Dell Windows XP

First, and perhaps most importantly, deauthorize your
computer in iTunes. (Advanced..Deauthorize computer).
You need to backup a few things:
1) Your Library - this should be 2 files in "My
Documents\My Music\iTunes\" - "iTunes Library.itl",
and "iTunes Music Library.xml".
2) Your Music - by default this is again in the
iTunes folder, under "iTunes Music". Otherwise,
backup the folder containing all your music. If
you're not sure where this is, look in the
Preferences in iTunes, under the Advanced tab,
General tab. It will show you the path of the
folder.
3) Your downloaded Artwork, again in iTunes, in
"Album Artwork"
4) Optional - your iTunes preferences -- the folder
"\Documents and Settings\username\Application
Data\Apple Computer\iTunes". You won't see this
folder by default -- you have to turn on the "view
hidden files" option in Explorer (Tools...Folder
Options..View tab) first.
Also, after you reinstall, you probably want to use
the same user name you had before. Copy all the
stuff above back to their previous locations, install
iTunes, and everything should be there.
If for some reason you can't or don't want to use the
same user name, you may have a problem with iTunes
locating your Music. Try holding shift when you
start, and select the "iTunes Library.itl" file when
prompted.
Thank you for your time spent on your reply. I will try your suggestion.
Happy New Year

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