Music is on an external hard drive how to transfer to iPod without using disk space on MacBook

Hi
I just brought a new iPod as my last one broke and I was wondering if there was a way to transfer my music currently stored on an external hard drive on to the iPod without having to have it using up disk space on my MacBook.
I was told in the Apple store by a sale guy that you can do this by creating a playlist in iTunes and dragging the music files in from the hard drive. He said it wouldn't be stored on the MacBook and the playlist could only be accessed (or music played on the macbook) when the hard drive was connected. But when we tried this it started transferring ALL of the music from the hard drive onto the main iTunes library and subsequently onto the disk space on the MacBook. 
Can someone help me :-)

The sales guy does not know what he's talking about...
Open iTunes preferences Advanced tab.  Uncheck the box for Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library.  Click OK.
Now, when you add those songs to your iTunes library, iTunes will access the song files from the external drive, where they are currently located.  And you can sync them to your iPod.

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