ARG! My harddrive crashed and I lost everything! Anyway to recover?

Question

I had tons of music I purchased from iTunes, and I also have and use an iPod (one of the cheap little shuffles). Anyway, my hard drive crashed and I was unable to recover anything, so had to get a new harddrive and rebuild my computer. So now I am left with nothing but what was already on my iPod. Now I want to transfer the songs I do have on my iPod to my new iTunes, on the new hard drive, and curious if I'm able to recover any of the music through iTunes that I purchased? Do they keep a record of that stuff by chance? Am I able to redownload anything I purchased?
Also, how do I get the songs off my iPod now and onto my computer? It gave me an option to Transfer songs from my iPod to the iTunes here but so far it didn't work.. just transfered 3 very odd songs I've never seen before in my life.
Thanks for any help!
Puppy

Answer 1

I'm not sure if both of these methods will work with a Shuffle but some of the third party utilities specifically say they do. There is a manual method of accessing the iPod's hard drive and copying songs back to iTunes on Windows posted in this thread: MacMuse - iPod to iTunes
For a more automated solution then there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve the music files and playlists from your iPod, this is just a selection. Have a look at the web pages and documentation for these, they are generally quite straightforward. Have a read through for mention of an iPod Shuffle.
YamiPod Mac and Windows Versions
iGadget Windows Only
iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
iPod Access Mac and Windows Versions
PodUtil Mac and Windows Versions
iPodCopy Mac and Windows Versions
PodPlayer Windows Only
CopyPod Windows Only