IPod 160GB says there is nothing on it, but only has 148GB space

Question

I was putting music on my 160GB when my power surged and turned off the computer. My iPod had about 12GB of space used on it, but now it says there is no music or videos. When I look at it in iTunes, there is only 148GB of space available, so all of that music must be on there somewhere.
What I want to do is, if possible, restore all the music. I tried doing the 5 R's, but that didn't work. If that isn't possible, I would like to completely wipe out the iPod, reverting it back to it's 160GB state. Any ideas?

Answer 1

This process started in the early days when Hard Drives were really small and marketing departments thought it was a big deal to make a disk seem a little bigger than it really is. Also many folks from cutomers to salespeople found it difficult to calculate using binary numbers so it seemed simpler to just decimalize the GB numbers. No body felt ripped off because all the numbers were small anyway.
Now that common disk sizes have grown huge the difference between 160 and 148 is significant and people do feel ripped off when they notice. Unfortunately the use of decimal GB sizes is entrenched in the industry. When Apple buys the HD to put in the iPod they are buying a 160 Gb drive and all 160GB drives from all manufacturers will have 160 printed on the exterior while still having only 148GB(binary) Nothing Apple can do to stop that.