iBook is eating my iPod

[s3raphim]

Well actually it's my friends iPod.
I plugged a 15Gb windows formatted iPod (fairly old one) into my iBook, and I'll be damned if it didn't get reformatted.
Needless to say, my friend was less that thrilled and I my life was spared only because the collection was backed up elsewhere.
Now I turned of the autosychronization thing in iSync, but that looks like its for .Mac and iDisk, not for the iPod/iTunes problem. I just wanted to me able to access the files on the iPod, and possibly moves a few things back and forth, but only a few. How do I turn off the autosync and use the iPod more like a disk?

On another note, how does one get a Windows laptop to recognize an iBook that has been booted as a firewire drive? Is this possible?

Let me know, thanks.