new hard drive, lost itunes, and iphone help please

[headlessandclueless]

my hard disk died and i was told they couldnt get any data off it. so now i have a brand spanking new harddrive and no data obviously. if i plug my iphone in, will it sync with new itunes and i lose all my paid for songs? not many, as i am an old fart, but still.
tia

Basically, yes. But there are some programs out there for copying from iPhone/iPod to computer so you can get all your songs back that way. Google "ipod to itunes" or something like that.

thank you . will go look

You will only loose the songs if you let iTunes automatically manage your music for you.

The first time you connect the phone iTunes should ask you if you want iTunes to automatically manage your music or if you want to do it manually.

If you do it manually then it won't replace what's on your phone with what's in your iTunes (which to begin with will be nothing, which is why music is lost).

I set all my iPods to manually manage their music and have music on all of them that isn't in my iTunes library.

PS: However do look into ways of getting the music off of the phone as you'll want to have a backup of the music anyhow.

thank you for your advice. i have now managed to get the purchased songs from iphone to itunes, as well as the apps. But the other songs which were ripped from cd's belonging to a number of different friends, and my photos. no idea how to do them. i have googled, and found copybot.com. should i download it?
tia