iPod suitable for Music/Photo backup option?

[tji]

I have a 60GB video iPod, on which my whole music library is synched, as well as my whole iPhoto library (with the option for "Include full-resolution photos" checked).

I'm looking at backup procedures for all the various documents and data on my MacBook Pro, and I just want to confirm that in the case of a total failure of my MacBook's hard drive, that I could recover some stuff from my iPod.

Is this true, are all the files there, or does it leave out anything? Am I missing anything in the Photos/Songs on the iPod? I assume if I had to re-import, I would lose all my Albums/Playlists. But, having some source of recovery is certainly better than losing them.

Can the data be supplemented in any way to provide a better backup?

Thanks for any info..

[CAlvarez]

Photos: Your photos will be there but I don't know of any way to sync the album data back to the Mac. That would be a real issue as you'd have to re-sort everything, add their tags and keywords and such.

Music: Third party utilities can bring them back from the iPod, but I've heard of issues with the playlists. If that doesn't matter to you, then yes, this is a good backup.

[tji]

Thanks Carlos.

An application that parsed the library data files and could recreate the original groupings could be an interesting project. Depending on the capabilities to programmatically create and modify albums/playlists, this might not be too difficult.