Originally Posted by
iapetus
Sounds like I'm in a similar situation. Our had drive on the home computer crashed; I was stupid enough not to have a back-up.

We couldn't get the data retrieved from the bad hard drive (I've not yet given up), so we're starting all over. All of the music that I have on my iPhone/iPod will be lost the next time that I try to sync it up; fortunately there's nothing I might lose that I don't have on a music CD.
As tev9999 said, you can get them back. A google search will give more info, but in a nutshell:
1) Start iTune and turn of the setting for auto sync.
2) Connect your ipod.
3) Go to windows explorer and find the usb drive that corresponds to the ipod.
4) Copy files back to a folder on the computer.
5) Import the files into itunes.