Putting library and all music on external hard drive

This may be obvious, but I want to put all my music on an external hard drive to free up space on my laptop. I want to be able to plug in my ipod and have it update the full music library. I tried changing the library in advanced preferences and it just made a folder that didn't have anything in it on the external hard drive. Do I have to drag and drop Itunes Library from my internal harddrive user folder to the external? Thanks, and sorry for the slightly dunderheaded question.

In the iTunes preferences, under the "Advanced" tab, you have to make sure to uncheck the option to "Copy files to the iTunes Media folder when adding to library". Make sure to keep the option above it checked, that reads "Keep iTunes Media folder organized". Then, when you want to add music to your library, put the new music file in the external drive's folder with the rest of your music files, then drag it to the iTunes icon. iTunes will keep it on the external drive and organize it in there.
This is at least what I do. Perhaps others have a different way to do it but that has worked pretty well for me.
Message was edited by: gojirasan

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