How can I restore the library & files that were previously on my Nano?

Question

Here's what happened... I hooked the Nano up to my computer at work to listen to it & charge it, but could not click on any of the music. Somehow I ended up with a prompt to "update the library" with a "yes" or "no" choice. I thought updating the library meant that the files on my Nano would create a list on the work computer's empty library so that I could play the files from my Nano. I did not expect it to transfer any files!!!! There was NO WARNING THAT IT WOULD ERASE INFORMATION!!!!! What then happened was horrible. The empty library on my work computer overwrote my Nano!!!!!! So now I have lost all of my files that I was planning to listen to on my flight to Spain tomorrow. I have been searching desperately to try to restore the files on my Nano, but have not been able to find an answer. I was planning to learn Spanish from the files on my Nano during my flight there! Now the Nano has wasted the money I spent on the Spanish CD's, the Nano and the ridiculously expensive & numerous separate accessories! This incident has really made me hate the Nano (which was given to me as a Christmas present). It has caused me nothing but pain & expense in buying junk for it and now trying to recover files without any good information on the Apple website! Why????? I thought Apple was user friendly before this Nano!

Answer 1

I'm sorry that you didn't read the manuals but that's the way it works:
Copying songs from your iPod to your computer
"The iTunes library on your computer holds all the songs you've encoded from your CD collection or purchased from the iTunes Music Store. With default settings, iTunes automatically copies the songs in your library to your iPod. When you use your iPod as a hard disk, you can't see the songs iTunes copies to your iPod in the Finder or My Computer. This is normal. Using the Finder or My Computer, you can't copy these song files from your iPod back to iTunes or to any other computer. The synchronization between your iPod and your computer is always one way: from iTunes to iPod.
If you've erased the music library on your computer, there's no way to use the Finder or My Computer to copy the songs from your iPod to reconstitute the library on your computer. One solution is to encode the songs from your CD collection again, then sync your new library with iPod. If you purchased songs from the iTunes Music Store and didn't back them up, there's no way to download them again. You'll have to buy new copies of the songs."
Taken from Using your iPod as a hard disk
Regards
Colin R.