Lost Music But Still on iPod (with added difficulty)

Changed from Mac back to PC about 8-months ago and while transferring my files across, using an external hard drive, the drive crashed fatally and I lost about 15 years worth of music, films, and photos I had accumulated. I had an epiphany last night lying in bed when I realised I had an old iPod that contained all my music and that I could somehow salvage that.

I got up early this morning and eagerly read the forum and tried to use the steps given in another post to transfer the music from my iPod to my PC, but as I had been using a Mac previously, there seems to be at least a couple of extra obstacles in the way. It wont let me use the evice as mass storage as it wants me to format it, and on iTunes its telling me to restore iPod.

I really hope someone on here is clever enough to talk me through this. It would definitely soften the blow of losing everything.