Backing Up Music on 160 GB Classic

I’ve had a 160GB classic for about the last 5 years. How do you back up the music on your iPod? I read tutorials and did this a couple years ago, but remember seeing this weird 4-letter coding for the songs of certain artists. If something happened to the data on the device, and I had to load it back on, would it generate/recognize the actual song titles? Is there any software that preserves the actual titles and organization? I own all the music, but it would be a major pain to have to reload everything, because I’ve done a lot with the organization.



Also, is there a way to generate and export a list of every single song on this kind of iPod? (Preferrably in a text or Excel format) What a great resource if I ever had to reload the material.

via iLounge Forums http://forums.ilounge.com/ipod-classic-legacy-ipods/279734-backing-up-music-160-gb-classic.html