Using iPod as backup disk for failing drive

Question

I am an avid user of iTunes with multiple years of history behind me, and I have owned my own iPod since about February, and I have never been disappointed until now, but I feel this is more an ID 10.T error than anything else.
I have a big library, so much so that a regular iPod just wouldn't do it, I had to go for the biggest one available. With a library of 5,230 songs covering 31.65GB, I have a nearly irreplacable collection, and to my dismay, my internal disk is failing (thank you Maxtor...)
As a wise move, I synchronised my iPod with iTunes with the latest additions, and was horrified to find that iTunes had sleuthed an entire band (Motorhead! No!), three songs from another band (Jimi Hendrix, why all the good guys?!), and two lone songs had become victim to my series of bad sectors cropping up all over the place. While I was thankful that this had not altered my iPod listings (the tracks are still on the iPod, and are still playable), I am left with a situation.
If I want to recover these tracks, most of which were ripped from now long-lost CDs years ago rather than purchased over iTMS, how would I go about doing it? Obviously, restoring them on the failing disk would be absolutely fruitless, but there will come a time when I CAN afford to replace the disk, and when this time comes, the entire library will need restoring, and as an extra precaution, I want to have the library stored on my partner's PowerBook. Having turned off automatic synchronisation, under the fear that I would lose my tracks, I thought there would then also be a method for transferring all the data FROM the iPod TO a machine, but this does not appear to be possible, and one begins to ponder the usefulness and customer satisfaction of a one-way music player? Is there an option within iTunes I am missing or simply haven't found yet? Or does the problem lie deeper than I believe it to be? How am I supposed to get music off, and re-enable automatic synchronisation without vaporising my irreplacable music collection that already exists on my iPod?
Seriously, it took me many years to rip, and over five hours to transfer, do NOT tell me I'm going to have to vaporise it to do anything with it, as I've already lost a few ultra-rare tracks on the disk...
Any help that could be given is very much appreciated.
Custom Windows XP Pro

Answer 1

Now that your iPod is set for manual music management, does the iPod show up in Windows like an external drive? Do you see it listed either by name or by the generic "removable disk" under My Computer? Because once Windows recognizes it as a removable drive, you can open it and poke around for your files. First you need to expose hidden files using Windows' Tools•Folder Options•View settings. Then you'll see the folders in which the iPod stores all the stuff.