How to I move my music files from FAT32 to HFS  external drive

Hi-
I am using iTunes 11.0.1 in OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard on an early 2008 MacBook. I followed instructions at
iTunes for Mac: Moving your iTunes Media folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449
It worked fine and now my ~120 GB of music (and ~20 GB of video) is on an external drive "Tardis" and iTunes works well. The only data on "Tardis" is my Apple-named iTunes media folders/files inside a folder called "iTunes." My iTunes library files are on my MacBook and being backed up (along with other personal data) by Time Machine to another external HD "Rivendell."
Unfortunately I did not realize "Tardis" was still formatted as FAT32 and I cannot include it in my Time Machine backups. I want to move my music files to an HFS+ drive so that Time Machine will back them up.
I am keen on keeping all the metadata associated with my music files, as I've spent a lot of time organizing and tweaking, and want the play statistics also. There is a lot of classical as well as rock/pop/alternative and a smattering of jazz.
Is there an easy way to get my music to an HFS+ drive? I did find a possible method here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/9690221#9690221Re: How to move my iTunes library from an external FAT32 drive
This says to get a new HFS+ drive, then use equivalent of http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1449 to consolidate to new drive.
I can do this, however it took iTunes ~12 hours to "consolidate" my files from internal HD to external FAT32 drive "Tardis". Now I would be going from one USB 2 drive to another USB 2 drive. Is there a faster way?
Is it possible to:
get a new drive and format as HFS+
copy everything over from FAT32 "Tardis" to new HFS+ drive (using "finder"), keeping the entire file structure
disconnect "Tardis"
rename new drive to "Tardis"
open iTunes and have things work
Seems to me copying is much quicker than "consolidating". I've done both recently.
If the drag-copy method causes me to lose metadata, then it will not work and I have to use the long consolidate process.
Thanks in advance for any help.
-Adam

Possibly,
You will need some data recovery software, it will cost $100 approximately, I can recommend Data Rescue by Prosoft.
Until you get that eject the drive and leave it that way until you are ready to try and recover your files.
Then start using a backup system, this could have been avoided for less money than the software will cost.

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