External Hard Drives!? 10pts please help?

Alright I have an old computer, I did a bunch of downloading crap and put it on my 500gb external hard drive. Well my music is on there too! I bought a new computer and I want to put my music back onto CD's. But I dont want to hook the external hard drive up to my new computer if it may have a virus on it. As long as I don't move any of the files on to my new computers hard drive will it stay clean of virus's? I have mcafee for a security suite. But I need to make sure that I dont have to move my music onto my hard drive to burn it onto cd's. New computers dont come with wipe disks if you get a virus. And im broke after buying the new computer. So is it safe?