New hard drive...now what to do with iTunes/iPhone??

My hard drive (thanks, Mac/Apple!) crashed completely a couple months ago, and it's been that long since I've backed up my phone. After a scare tonight I realized I really need to do that...only my phone still thinks it's synced with the iTunes on the old hard drive.  The iTunes on my new hard drive has none of the content that is currently on my phone.
What do I do?? How do I back it up without losing everything? Is that even possible? The crash happened in the middle of a backup, and I lost everything on my backup hard drive as well (so awesome).  However, we still have our giant huge insane music library where most of the songs are...it would just take ages to go through it and try to figure out what I had in my library (the library is a mix of my husbands and my music). There is also new content that I want to add to my phone, but I can't see how to add that. I tried to manually manage the music and downloads, but in order to do that I have to accept an "erase and sync" which means I'll lose everything.  I was able to transfer my iPhone purchases to the new iTunes.....
I have no idea where to go from here...

I have the same situation as largirl, and I'm dismayed to see that there has been no answer to her in seven months! I really don't want to lose the podcasts, music, and apps (and their data) that I have accumulated on the iPhone.
On a different thread (https://discussions.apple.com/message/8926954#8926954), I did find a helpful answer. Allan Sampson wrote:
Connect your iPhone and without syncing, at the iTunes menu bar go to File and select Transfer Purchases From - the name of your iPhone. Before doing so, you need to re-authorize your computer with your iTunes account with iTunes.
Allan's helpful suggestion is three years old, but fortunately, it still applies. If any Apple folks are reading this, please expand this command to let us copy everything from the iPhone to the Mac.
Message was edited by: goaliegeewhiz

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