On electronic devices

K loaded up an Ipod Nano for me in January 2008 with over 1400 tunes. It's been working fine and I've added new tunes and deleted others over the months. When I fell about a month ago, the Nano got "stuck" and with the help of tips on-line I was able to get it to unfreeze and get it charged up by plugging it into my computer. This time when I plugged it in the message came back that my computer did not recognize the device. I tried all the tips on line but nothing worked. K had purchased an extended warranty and I took it to the Apple shop. They said they could fix it but would have to erase the disk. I don't have the tunes backed up so that's a non-starter. To cope with the near term situation (getting the ipod charged) I got a direct plug in charger and that will work for now until I want to erase and add more tunes. How many more than 1,400 tunes does a person need!