I hope this isn't a stupid 'noob' question, I did a Forum search and couldn't find anything similar, and whilst Google has given me some pointers I can't find anything specific to my query.

As I mentioned on another thread I recently had to replace my computer for the second time in six months (that'll teach me to buy a used Time Machine). I had around 10GB of music on the 40GB HD which I use iTunes to listen to (no choice, as I have an iPod). I've installed this drive as a slave to the 80GB drive in my new machine, and my iTunes and music files have survived intact (phew!)

My problem is that I want to transfer these onto my new C drive (and a new install of iTunes) whilst preferably preserving my play counts, last played data and most importantly my playlists, of which I have about 30 each containing between 50 and 100 tracks. Now whilst I've found some directions online on how to do this they all either assume you can still open the original copy of iTunes to consolidate the library (I can't, as it's on a slave drive which was a C until its motherboard croaked) and that the files are all in one place (in fact, mine are stored in a number of folders under My Music).

I got this horribly wrong last time and ended up basically having to go through thousands of tracks and rebuild all my playlists manually. In fact it was the prospect of having to do this again that annoyed me most about my PC giving up on me. If at all possible i'd like to avoid the same this time round - any suggestions to how I can transfer my music library AND playlists using the .xml file without consolidating the library or opening the original install of iTunes (unless of course there's some way this would be possible from a slave HD that's been amputated from its Mobo?) would be very gratefully received!!!