Thanks Blackhorse.

Just reading user comments & reviews by Cnet it appears Copytran is a great product for smart backups and allows You to either archive or import into iTunes or copy from your Ipod (files) into a hard drive, but it does not appear to have any option to transfer and sync music files from your computer to Ipod without transferring into Itunes first.

I would prefer to eliminate and removing using Itunes completely. It probably is impossible having sync capability with Ipod.

Tom.