Hard drive crash - advice?

my hard drive has died with no backup (stupid, I know) so I am trying to figure out what my options are to restore my music library without re-importing all my cds (I had about 20 gigs in my computer).
1) once I get a new hard drive is there any way to pull the songs from my ipod back down onto my computer?
2) if not, I was thinking my other option could be to see if a computer repair place could restore the data from my drive onto an external hard drive which I could then copy back to my computer and use the external drive to backup my computer to avoid this happening again.
assuming the data is there on the busted drive, is that a feasible plan?

Well, please do me a HUGE FAVOR!! As soon as you reinstall your Library, please develop a back up plan. This is an example of why it is SOO important to back up your music.
Ok, you can get third party software that will allow you to Rip your music off your iPod and onto your iTunes. Some are for free for a limited amount of uses, and some are for a nominal fee. I use iPod agent.
Read this article and it should help you out.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300173

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