iPod syncing new ipod appears to have caused itunes to delete music

[geeefive]

So, in looking at what happened, it appears that when I attempted to sync my new ipod w/ itunes 9 that itunes deleted 50 cd's worth of music from my mac G5. I checked the old ipod mini and all the music is there.

So, the issues that I need some assistance with are s follows:

1. How do I get all my music in my mini ipod transferred/ copied /synced, back into my itunes library?

The playlists including the song names in each playlist are still in itunes. When I click one a song in one of these playlists, an dialog pops up and asks if I want to go find the song. I was successful in copying a few songs from a very old backup over to the directory on my hard disk and was able to recover them, but the backup is 4 years old; thus does not contain much of my music.

Considering that my mini ipod still contains all the playlists and music, and that my itunes still lists the play lists and music titles, can I simply sync my mini ipod in order to transfer the music back to itunes?

2. Once all my music is recovered, how do I successfully sync all of the music to my new ipod nano?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide,

Geeefive