Large Movie Collection Needs to be Relocated to Hard Disk - Please Help?

Question

Hi, I use iTunes primarily for movies both home video and commercial movies that I watch on either an iPod Classic or iPod Touch. I have about 100GB of movies which I made significant edits and have added DVD cover Art. I do not want to lose any of this work but I also cannot see myself burning all this to DVD.
If I go to the directory where the movies are located, only the movie is there with the original file name. None of the added DVD cover art or the changed titles are present. These changes must be located in tag info somewhere else in iTunes (I think). I am afraid I will lose all my hard work.
Is there a way to move everything to an external hard drive from within iTunes? Or is there a third party application that can do this for me? I have "Googled" this but I have only found apps for copying movies off the iPod.
Any advice would be much, much appreciated!
Warm regards,
Roestuff

Answer 1

Assuming you use the iTunes default settings where iTunes copied added items to your iTunes folder and organizes your library (meaning - everything is all self contained in the iTunes folder), then all you have to do is drag & drop your iTunes folder (not just the iTunes Music folder you find inside the iTunes folder) to the external drive and copy the entire thing.
If you want to test that it worked or would like to actually start using it from that location instead, use these instructions when you start iTunes to point it to the new location...
How to open an alternate iTunes Library file or create a new one
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304447
If you are just testing, then close iTunes after you verify it works, and restart iTunes again with the same instructions and point it back to your internal drive (original) location.
Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=307074
Patrick