ipod help............

I have lost more hard drives and motherboards in my computer over the years, but my ipod holds true (knock on wood...). This means i have very little music on my actual iTunes, it's all on my iPod. My question is this, How do i get stuff off my ipod easily? To not only access it but to also back it up. Any help would be good...EDIT! Problem solved! Read below.

EDIT!!!!

WINNER! I had a ton of emails about this subject, thanks everyone! Frank Guerrero sent a simple free solution that actually worked and is all done without downloading or buying anything. THis is for a PC (which i have). 

Frank writes:

 After you've loaded Itunes onto your system you will need to plug in your Ipod. In Itunes click on your Ipod which will show up on the left hand side of Itunes. You should see a bunch of tabs, the first being Summary. This is the Tab I want you to look at. Underneath the "Check for Update" and "Restore" buttons are your options. I normally only have "Open ITunes When this iPod is connected" and "Manually manage music" and "Enable disk use." The "Enable disk use" will need to be checked in order to work. You may need to uncheck manually manage music in order for Enable disk use to not be greyed out. Once you've enabled disk use your Ipod is now seen by your computer as a hard drive.This is where all of your Ipod settings and music is kept. I must mention that I'm only dealing with a PC and not a Mac. I'm not familiar with Mac's. Double click on my computer and you should see your Ipod's name and a drive letter next to it. Double click on it and then double click on iPod_Control. You will see folders but we are only interested in the folder titled "Music." This folder contains all of the music on you Ipod. Right click on that folder and copy. Find a location and paste this folder onto your system. I would recommend placing it in your Itunes folder located under My Documents\My Music\iTunes. This is the default location where iTunes defaults to. Past the "Music" folder here. It may take a little while depending on how many Gigs of music you had. Once the copying process has completed you will need to right click on the "Music" folder and click on properties. The attributes at the bottom of the folder will probably be checked for Read only. Uncheck that and hit apply. It will ask if you want to apply changes to this folder only or to this folder,subfolders and files. Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files and click on ok. Click ok again and you will be out of the properties of the "Music" folder. Next you will need to open iTunes up and go to File>Add Folder to Library. Browse to My Documents\My Music\iTunes and double click on the "Music" folder. This should start importing all of your music off of your iPod and into your iTunes Library.
And as far as syncing your ipod and itunes library, just uncheck everything in your itunes library so it doesn't wipe your ipod.
Wow, simple and even worked. Once i hit copy i went to lunch and let it do its thing.
Thanks Frank!