Can I use my portable external hard drive to run Itunes?

How can I transfer songs from an external hard drive to my current iTunes? (Full explanation below)?

• My old iPod died. I knew it was coming so before it died I managed to rescue the music from it. I have recently bought a new iPod (from the UK) and have moved to Japan so am using a different laptop to the one I use at home. I used iPod reverse software to get the songs from my old iPod onto a large external hard-drive so I could take all my songs abroad with me. The files are no-longer iTunes and can run through Windows Media Player. I want to convert them to iTunes files again but am worried I will screw it up and lose my music! My new laptop has a very small hard-drive and my music collection is larger than 30 GB. There is less than 30 GB remaining in the new laptop's hard-drive. I am unsure how to get my old music onto my new iPod/iTunes as it literally won't fit onto the drive. Any help on this would be appreciated!

• Answer:

  All you need to do is uncheck the "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" option. In your iTunes preferences, change the location of your iTunes Music folder to the one you're using on your external drive, and drag all your music into the open iTunes window. Basically, you're telling iTunes where your music is manually. You can also let iTunes automatically search your entire hard drive for any file it can read, move all those files into your iTunes music library, and then organize them into a logical file system. I prefer to do it manually, because I don't necessarily want every sound on my hard drive to be in my iTunes music library.