#1 Question about iPod Disk

[Anonymous]

This may have been covered elsewhere but I couldn't find it. Basically I have a lot of content on iTunes that (to save space) I do not sync to my iPod - for example audio books that I purchased either online or ripped from CD's that I own, podcasts that I have listened to on my iPod and then removed, TV shows, photos, etc. (and of course TV shows take up a lot of room and can't be re-downloaded if lost without paying again).

I don't want to lose these items or have to spend hours re-ripping all my CD's.

So here (finally) are my questions .....

Can iPod Disk back up up all my content (photos, TV shows, podcasts, audiobooks, and music) from my windows-based PC to an external hard drive (yes, I know you can do this to DVD's - but that is approximately 8-9 DVD's every time I would do a full back-up - lots of time where I have to be there to feed the PC)? If I do this, how would I restore in the event of a hard-drive crash or replacement of a computer?

I also have a lot of playlists on my iPod that I did not reproduce manually on iTunes. This one might be trickier but would this work with iPod Disk?
1. Update iTunes from my iPod with iPod Disk (would it be smart enough to allow me to just copy playlists - the content in them is already present on both the iPod and the PC?).

2. Backup iTunes to an external drive (presuming that if step 1 is successful, iTunes would now have everything that was on my iPod - music, movies, TV shows, podcasts, photos, and playlists) as well as the content that I normally do not download to my iPod from the PC).

If step 2 works, then in the event of a hard-drive crash I could restore everything to iTunes, and if I ever needed to replace my iPod, I could do that and restore all my playlists as well!

Last question - assuming all this is possible, as I add content to my iPod, can I simply do a differential backup going forward, or do I have to periodically do a complete backup.

Thanks for any help you can give me on this.