How to relocate itunes library to external drive

Hi Folks,
In another forum on the above topic I found an answer that consisted as a TWENTY-FOUR-PAGES-long forum discussion. I hope that there is someone who can nutshell 24 pages for this newbie
I have an external SimpleTech hard drive, Windows Xp, Compaq, laptop. I don't want to lose my itunes library, if my computer crashes. And, I don't want to eat up all my computer memory with music and podcast/vodcast files.
1) Is there a simple, step-by-step operation to relocate my itunes library to my external drive? I hope one of you are willing to take the time to help me out.
2) In addition to HOW to do it, what does it mean, practically? I mean itunes remains on my computer, right? And, it just goes back and forth to the external drive for my music files, right?
3) Can I put my album artwork on the external, as well?
Thank you
Randy

Is there a simple, step-by-step operation to relocate my itunes library to my external drive?
Yes:
- Launch iTunes, click Edit > Preferences > Advanced tab > General tab
- Click the 'change' button to redirect your iTunes Music Folder to your external hard drive. It's sometimes helpful if you open that hard drive through Windows Explorer first, and create a folder on it called 'iTunes' or something similar.
- Select both options to "Keep iTunes music folder organized" and "copy files to iTunes music folder when adding to library" and then click OK
- Click your Advanced menu and choose Consolidate Library
This copies your library files onto the hard drive and ensures that iTunes looks there for the files. Once this is completed, and you've verified iTunes is reading the files from the external drive (you can right click on the file and click Get Info, then click the Summary tab, and at the bottom it'll say "Where" and show you where your file is stored) you can go into your My Music folder on the computer and delete the iTunes files.
The iTunes program files will still be stored on your C: drive, to make Windows happy, and it just refers to your external hard drive to find the files so it can play them and sync them to your iPod.
When you follow the above steps, your Album Artwork should copy to the external drive as well.
Apple has this support document on the issue:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1751
Hope this is helpful
CG

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I'm sure that solution would work, but I guess something else I did is messing things up.
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1589
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Message was edited by: CindyLoo

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(123001)

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How to relocate itunes library to external drive

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