How do I move music from iPod back to my computer w/reformatted hard drive?

Question

My computer was malfunctioning and required a reinstallation of the OS. Doing so overwrote my iTunes library. Now the only place the library exists is on my iPod. Is there any way for me to transfer the library back to my computer? Thanks.

Answer 1

P.C. Instructions
Plug your iPod into your computer. Make sure that disk use is enabled. (enable it in iTunes on the main iPod screen; if you manually manage your music, then it is already enabled.) Go to my computer. First, right-click your iPod. Then, select Tools ® Folder Options. This takes you to Control Panel ® Folder Options. Select the View tab. Under "Hidden files and folders," change "Do not show hidden files and folders" to "Show hidden files and folders." Click Apply to All Folders, and now all the invisible files on your iPod will be visible.
To get to your music files, navigate to iPod_Control\Music (meaning click on the iPod drive in My Computer). There you will find a series of folders starting with a letter and ending with a number. Congratulations! You are now looking at your iPod database, where all your music files are kept. As with any other file, you can now copy your music to anywhere on your computer.
On a MAC
Launch the Terminal.application and type:
find /Volumes/[iPod'sNAME]/iPod_Control/Music -print | awk '¬ { gsub(/ /, "\ "); print }'
Substitute the name of your iPod for [iPod'sNAME]. Any spaces should be replaced with underscores (_). This will print a list of all the songs inside the Music folder with \ in place of spaces. Then, simply copy the location to the song you want and type open followed by that location to begin playing that song. You can then use a standard copy command such as cp to copy any file you select to its new location. This is tedious though. To copy your entire iPod's entire Music folder to your local computer, simply open the Terminal and write:
%ditto /Volumes/[iPod'sNAME]/iPod_Control/Music/ ~/Music/iPodTunes/
Again, substitute your iPod's name for [iPod'sNAME], using an underscore for any spaces in the name. This will copy the entire contents of your iPod's Music folder into a new folder inside your home directory's Music folder called iPodTunes.