External drive crash

[JackButler]

So my external glyph messed up, read similar problems elsewhere.

Not much worried about recorded content, as I have that elsewhere.

I do have a few questions if anyone can help.
I have around 200 gbs of music on it, the file names and such are on my iMac, but all the music itself is on that drive. I have all that on another system as well.
I want to:
get another drive, dump about half of those songs onto the new drive.
When I do this, do I need to wipe the entire iTunes catalog of file names/extensions from the Mac first or?

My worry is say if I only now have 1/2 of the original amount, all the file names are intact so when itunes goes to play at random, etc, it won't be able to locate the music files. Any easy way to do this?
Also, some of it was purchased from iTunes and store don that drive. Easy to get back?

Any help is appreciated.
Sorry if this isn't making much sense, early AM

 

[FFTT]

This app shoud help you recover the data in your Home Folder.
Which is where all your personal data should be.

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

If it's a true mechanical failure, it may not work.

Disk Warrior is another good recovery app.

Many times, hard drives fail from a bad hard drive controller
rather than a hard core mechanical failure.

 

[JackButler]

Thank you for the info my friend.
I actually was able to save everything, it started working. From my limited research some sort of internal cable issue is common with these, so off for warranty service soon :>O)