cooldep said:
Thank you Solaris,,but I can't find where to check or un-check your advice.
Paul, when the Nano is plugged in, click on the little iPod icon in the lower right corner of the iTunes window (or select Preferences > iPod > Music).
This will open a window with a series of check-boxes. Select "Manually manage songs and playlists."
From now on (unless you change this setting) iTunes will will NOT automatically load or erase any tracks when you plug in your Nano. You'll have to do this stuff by dragging and dropping tracks or playlists. So all your music on the Nano should be safe when you reformat your computer.
Another way to back everything up, of course, would be to copy the entire contents of your iTunes Music folder onto an external storage device.
Here's one more thing you might want to do. To preserve all your playlists, song ratings, "last played" data and the like, make a backup copy of the file called iTunes Music Library.xml, which is located in your main iTunes folder. It's a large file (on the order of 2MB per 1000 songs in your library), but you can burn it onto a CD, load it onto your iPod in disk mode, or whatever else will work. After you reformat your computer and open iTunes for the first time, you can run File > Import > [select the backup of this file], and you should recover all that information.