New pc with media on external drive

I currently have all of my iTunes media on in external USB drive. I have the iTunes application on the C Drive of my PC. I just bought a new PC and I know I need to install iTunes on it. Is there a way to get the new PC to recognize all of the old media that's on the external drive meaning are there some library files that I can copy and paste from the old computer to the new computer or do I have to go into iTunes and add each folder so that it can be seen by the application. This will take some time considering there is 800 GB of media.

The symptoms you describe correspond to the situation where you have your media on the external drive but the iTunes database (where playlists, ratings, etc. are stored) on the C: drive.  If you can access the old drive, look for the C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes folder, and in particular for the iTunes Library.itl file.  Then see turingtest2's user tip on Make a split library portable for steps necessary to bring your library into a standardized layout - I'd suggest that you aim to have the complete library on the external drive, in this structure:
where you primarily make use of iTunes' consolidation functions to move files and folders into this structure.  Once everything's in place, get a second external drive and use this to create and maintain a backup of your library (much easier with this "well formed" layout since everything you need to backup is in a common folder).

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