This is tough, I went through this at one point. Basically what happened with me is it started autoupdating (rapidly deleteing my entire collection before my teary eyes) and i tried to hit the lil' ipod button on the bottom right corner of the screen to save what i could.

In hindsight, a better solution (although not very practical) might be to uninstall itunes and plug in your ipod. This way iTunes won't open when you plug it in because it does not exist. Then download one of the many ipod-ripping programs (or do it yourself if you turn off hidden folders, it's really not so hard if you aren't worried too much about tags).
if your still confused feel free to email me: