Q: My ipod  has content that's been lost on itunes?

I have a fully loaded ipod, but when I go to itunes, very little of the same music is there. It was my fault, as i was trying to put all the music content from the laptop onto a seperate hard drive. In the process, I appear to have lost most of the music on itunes. The layout has even changed and there are barely any categories and all my playlists are missing. I have all this on the ipod, but if iconnect the two, im worried that the content on the ipod will sync with itunes and also be lost. However, I cannot go the rest of my life without changing the content on the ipod and i would really like to get whats on the ipod back onto the laptop. I also failed to get the music onto the seperate hard drive in spite of the instructions saying it was so easy, a monkey could do it. Anyone got a spare monkey? Sorry, in case you have not already worked it out, I have very few technical capabilities and would appreciate any help going. Thanks