Will itunes eat my songs?

This is a sad story. Until two days ago I was only a PC owner. That's sad enough, but here's the rest of the very sad story. I had added about 3,000 songs to my iTunes library and recently purchased about 38 on iTunes. My computer would not burn the songs on a CD so my son was helping me. He first tried to back-up my tunes and ended up making them disappear, all of them. Now my playlists show up multiple times in iTunes but all the song files "cannot be found".
We tried to recoup them every which way recommended on the Net, to no avail. And for some strange reason, my PC won't do a restore previous to 4 days ago. Just at the height of all this sadness, my husband bought me a brand spanking new born iMac. Yes! Tonight I 'completed' an album, the only songs of course that I have on this new computer. I burned all 18 songs in no time onto a CD. Yes again!
Now here's my question. I have a lot of my old tunes on my ipod. If I plug it in to sync with iTunes to transfer my newly purchased songs, will it eat all my songs up, or leave them there and just add the new ones? Here's hoping!
Edit: I need to clarify. I think I posted in the wrong place because I'm not using my old PC any more, or Windows. Will my new iMac recognize my iPod...how do I get it to?
Message was edited by: amember

*Now here's my question. I have a lot of my old tunes on my ipod. If I plug it in to sync with iTunes to transfer my newly purchased songs, will it eat all my songs up, or leave them there and just add the new ones? Here's hoping!*
Connect your iPod to your new computer (Macs can read Windows formatted drives so it should recognise your Windows formatted iPod without any trouble). If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod. When your iPod appears in the iTunes source list change the update setting to manual, that will let you use our iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default: Managing content manually on iPod and iPhone
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod. There are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve music files and playlists from your iPod. I use Senuti but have a look at the web pages and documentation for the others too, you'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos and games as well. This is just a small selection of what's available, you can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
Senuti Mac Only (iPod Touch & iPhone compatible)
PodView Mac Only
PodWorks Mac Only
iPodDisk PPC Mac Only (experimental version available for Intel Macs)
TuneAid Mac only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac & Windows
iPod Music Liberator Mac & Windows
iGadget Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
Floola Mac & Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
TouchCopy Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content only from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync. I would also advise that you get yourself an external hard drive and back your stuff up, relying on an iPod as your sole backup is not a good idea and external drives are comparatively inexpensive these days, you can get loads of storage for a reasonable outlay: Back up your iTunes library by copying to an external hard drive

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