My Mac's hard drive died, and I lost everything. Is there any way to get the photos that I synced onto my iPod touch back onto a new hard drive?

Several programs will let you transfer the photos from your iPod touch (or iPhone) back into iPhoto again. We dig PhoneView ($19.95, www.ecamm.com) because it provides access to every aspect of your device: notes, music, contacts, voice memos, and if you have an iPhone, your visual voicemails, call history, SMS/MMS messages--everything! Better yet, all of that data is searchable and transfers easily back to your Mac. And PhoneView even lets you use your device as an external drive for storing files.

PhoneView makes it easy to search and download virtually any piece of data on your iPod touch or iPhone.

But remember that your photos were compressed into a smaller size before they were synced to your iPod touch, so you won’t be getting the full-size images back again. This is where we’ll start sounding like your mother by reminding you that the best way to prepare for these situations is to always make regular backups. Since Time Machine is built into every Mac running Leopard or Snow Leopard, all you have to do is plug in an external hard drive or set up a Time Capsule, and that’s that. Alternatively, you can ditch the drive and sign up for an online backup service like Backblaze ($5/month, www.backblaze.com) or CrashPlan ($3.50/month, individual plan; www.crashplan.com).