My 4G 40 Gig iPod had been making the clicking noise I've read about on here for a couple of weeks, sometimes playing a song on shuffle and sometimes skipping it or skipping midway through the song.

So I take it home to upload some new music and I plug it in and it keep saying "updating." Well I leave it for a bit and I come back and it is completely erased all 4,500 of my songs off of it - quite the bummer.

What is my next step? Do I need to do anything before uploading most of my music again? I don't want to waste my time if this is just going to happen again; you just don't upload 4,500 songs overnight.