Everything frozen when trying to move music from ipod to mac. Cannot eject.

Question

My hard drive recently crashed, and as a result I lost all of my music. I had most of it on my iPod, so today I downloaded a program called iPod Viewer 3.0.1
( http://download.cnet.com/iPod-Viewer/3000-18545_4-24961.html?tag=mncol )
I put my iPod (30gig iPod Video) into disk mode, and connected it, and began to transfer my music. About a tenth of the way through, the program froze. I pressed "Cancel," and eventually hit "Force Quit."
I had been importing the music into the iTunes Music folder.
Now, iTunes won't open, the program iPod Viewer won't start working again, and I cannot properly eject my iPod. Neither program is running, but when I try to press "Eject," Finder tells me that the iPod is in use and cannot be ejected, and I need to quit applications and try again.
Help?

Answer 1

See turingtest2's user tip on Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device for information on various 3rd party tools that can be used to recover content from iDevices to iTunes.  You can also achieve a partial recovery (media only, possibly without artwork), as follows:
Run iTunes with your iPod not connected, select Edit > Preferences > Devices and check the Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically box
Connect your iPod, select the Summary tab and check the Enable disk use box
Exit iTunes
You should now be able to see your iPod as a disc drive in Windows Explorer.  Make sure that you've configured Windows to show hidden files and folders (Organize > Folder Search and Options, View tab).
Open the iPod_Control folder on your iPod, and copy the Music folder that you'll see there to your desktop
Still using Windows Explorer, right click on the Music folder just copied to your desktop and make sure that both the Read-only and Hidden flags are cleared.
Run iTunes, select File > Add Folder to Library..., navigate to and select the Music folder on your desktop
The previous content of your iPod should now be added to your library.  Any songs/albums for which you'd previously used the Get Album Artwork function will no longer have associated images, but these should be easily redone.
This should be regarded as an "emergency" procedure only.  There's no excuse for not maintaining an up to date backup of your iTunes library (as with any data that you value) - computers, and in particular hard drives, always fail ... you just don't know when it's going to happen.  See another of tt2's user tips - Backup your iTunes for Windows library with SyncToy - for a suitable/recommended method.  Although cloud-based backups are the way things are headed, its probably still simpler to use an external hard drive - this may not be as high-tech as using the cloud but is more robust, at least as far as not having dependence on an internet connection.