Loss of music

Well, about 7 months ago my hard drive died and I discovered that the backup I was making on an external drive was selecting what it deemed important to backup instead of a complete backup which is what I thought it was making. What did that mean for me? Well, the loss of all the music I had downloaded (legally) since despite it being on my ipod, I can't get the bloody stuff back onto the new hard drive. It makes me sick thinking that I spent so much money buying music and now I have to buy it again... pathetic Apple. If anyone that comes to this page knows of a solid way of putting music from an ipod back onto a computer, please let me know.

I don't want to live in quasi fear that I will lose/damage my ipod and lose all the music I have on it. Granted this isn't the biggest problem in the universe, but music is important to me and it helps when exercising.