Reply to Track Collection Organizing

Had a few questions on computer organization.

Im looking to organize all my tracks i have on my laptop. First off ive heard for alot of community s that keeping tracks and samples on a external HD is a good idea. helps free up space and proccessor speed on the laptop. (running a win 7 64bit, 6g ram, i5 ). So Im going to be moving some stuff to my external and keeping my Ableton, TP2 and plugins on the laptop ( keep this laptop for strictly music purposes and minimal internet searching).

Once ive moved all my stuff to an external, will i have any issues with Traktor and/or Ableton recognizing tracks and samples? will either, kind of search for them on the computer and then still be able to use them, or will i need to re-import everything into traktor? If i just set music collection folders to search and include the external i should be good? Just wanting to make sure before i move everything, as i have alot of playlists, cue points and beatgrids done. I lost everything once when my laptop crashed and finally re-gained all my stuff back but all my music and samples are all scattered in different folders and files. thus im looking to reorganize it all into one area then broken down into folders.

any insight would be great before i start moving any files. my ableton stuff has a decent amount of samples in some tracks so i didnt know if moving thier home location to somewhere else will mess up ableton search path for the sample thus, creating all the stuff i have dead since it doesnt see the samples in the location they where in when the track was created.

Thanks

Ryan