Help with transferring music files onto external HD

[danetello]

I have just bought a new MacBook Pro with retina display today
At the moment in my current macbook pro, I have got a 1TB hard drive, most of this space is taken up by my music collection which is about 550GB. I bought the base model rMBP, so only have 256GB storage. I was going to do a simple time machine back up and then restore to my new macbook.
I am trying to reduce the space used on my HD so I have bought an external hard drive, and am planning to move my music collection onto there. However when I do this, there is an exclamation mark next to each song in iTunes.
The obvious solution would be to delete all my music in iTunes, and then transfer it back once it is copied to the hard drive. But then I would lose all the data like date added, date played, ratings, play count etc.
Is there a way I can transfer the music to my external HD, but still keep all the data in iTunes like the play count, date added etc?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Can this or that help?

 

[danetello]

I would prefer to keep the layout as it is if possible, just change the location of the files. Is that possible?

 

[Coffee87]

Change the location of the default music directory in Preferences.

 

[Dangerous Theory]

Why not copy the whole iTunes folder, including all your metadata onto the drive, then back onto the rMBP overwriting what may already be there.

 

[cshel24]

On mine, I took my old MacBook and copied the iTunes folder to an external HD. Then on the new MacBook, I opened iTunes ONCE. It created an iTunes folder. Then I moved the iTunes folder from the external HD to the music folder on the new MB Pro and said YES overwrite it. I opened up iTunes again, and all of my music, playlists, play counts etc... were right there in tact and perfect.


I also did this when i restored my MacBook a while back and it worked perfectly then too. One thing you HAVE to do is make sure that the iTunes folder that you want is OLDER than that of the new computer, otherwise you will get an error.

The target computer should be the one with the newest version of iTunes.