Moving itunes library from a pc to an external hard drive

1. how is this done ?
2. once my whole library is on the hard drive can i selectively move songs over to itunes on my pc ?
thanks for your help.

1. how is this done ?
2. once my whole library is on the hard drive can i
selectively move songs over to itunes on my pc ?
1. Plug Ext HD into the comp you are copying files from. Find your music folder. If you left it at the default it will be in your My documents: My Music folder, otherwise do a search for *.mp3 to find your music. Copy your music folder over to the Ext HD.
2. I am assuming that you are copying music from an old comp to a new comp here. If this is right, then just create a music folder, copy over all the songs or some of the songs from the Ext HD, then point Itunes to the music folder using File: add folder to library.

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