How do I recover my full iTunes library from iPod, play counts and playlists included? Free solutions, no $ :)?

I am a college student who is very into my music, and my my computer recently royally crashed. I had an extensive 3000+ song collection in my iTunes. I had thought ahead and backed up all of my songs and library files onto an external hard drive. However the drive is organized differently from the iTunes Music folder that they were originally in, meaning the library file is not working. I have everything I need, songs, ratings, playlists, and play counts on my iPod. However, I do not know how to move this info from the iPod to iTunes. Is there a way, through shareware, freeware, free downloads, etc., or through a technical trick for me to simply copy my entire iPod library to my computer and have all the song's information register. The play counts and ratings are very important to me, as I have spent a good amount of time filling them out, and my collection is relatively useless without them. Also, this is not a necessity, but is there a way to import the date originally added as well; as I normally sort my music by chronological order. This is a very bad problem, and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!