[markw10]

A friend of mine using a Windows PC as well as a 5G iPod. Her laptop recently crashed so she had to reformat and start over from factory defaults. As well, she had many songs on her iPod but doesn't have a backup of any of these.
If she hooks it up to her PC again once she installs iTunes will it wipe out everything on her iPod? She claims she had this happen to a friend once but I know there has to be some way around this.

[amazing]

there is software out there that allows you to pull the music on the iPod back onto the PC. At which point, you make sure that Windows iTunes can see the music. You'll lose the playlists, afaik.

[mduell]

Yes, if she "syncs" her iPod to her now-empty iTunes, it will delete everything from the iPod.

There are about 40000 options for programs/methods to copy the songs from your iPod back to your computer. See Google for more information.

[ghporter]

EphPod is the way I have handled this.