Touch wont restore

[kdot]

I've had the iPod Touch since January and I sync/recharge almost every night. Aside from losing the date/time on a regular basis, I haven't had any problems. I use roughly 3GB of the 8GB that are available. Last night, after downloading my podcasts, I attempted to sync. The entire capacity bar was ORANGE (for other media). It took a while, but re-synced all my music, and podcasts. However, the orange didn't go away, rather now I have about 3GB of BLUE and 3GB of ORANGE.

Taking the advice of some older posts in this forum, I did a restore, but instant panic set in when I thought I might lose my other data like calendar, notes, and the other apps. I knew I could resync the contacts from Windows Mail, but I have lots of data in the others and haven't found a way to back it up. Well, the restore failed with a message like, "Could not restore...". Nothing was modified on the Touch, but the problem isn't fixed yet either (ORANGE taking up 3GB)

My questions:
1. How do I fix things so the restore will work? If I ever seriously need to restore, it will probably fail again.
2. Will the restore delete data in Contacts, notes and other apps? If so, is there any way to back that data up? I hope there is a way, because otherwise, the apps are worthless if at any time, the data can get wiped out with a restore.
3. Is there a way to get rid of the ORANGE allocated space without doing a restore? It's obviously an error.

I appreciate any pointers and suggestions,

Karen.

[kdot]

Does anyone have ideas about fixing the Orange (Other) capacity usage when restore wont work?

How about what to do to fix restore when it fails when I try to use it?

Thanks in advance.

[PG4G]

You will need to go into DFU mode to make sure it will definitely restore (recovery mode doesn't always work)

To go into DFU mode:

Start iTunes with you iPod CONNECTED.
Now, with it connected, hold the home and power buttons, ignoring the iPod's messages on the screen.
When the iPod disappears from iTunes, let go of the power button but not the home button.
Keep holding the home button until the iPod shows up in iTunes. When it shows up, quickly let go of the home button. The iPod is in DFU mode. The screen should be black/blank.

Now restore.

DFU mode restore works 99.99999999999% of the time as it bypasses all software on the device.

It even circumvents some of the latest attempts from Apple to stop developers from downgrading their development iPods, and they have installed security to stop downgrading. It bypasses all software issues.

Often, if the "other" error occurs, the only option is a restore. Not a big issue. Just an annoyance.