Microsoft Zune 80gb

I live in Northern colorado and on Dec. 24th I was headed up to North Park Colorado (about a 3 hour drive) for Christmas. As soon as we got 20 minutes from my house my Zune 80gb crashed and I found an error screen that said

"Connect Zune device to pc"

I had been experiencing problems with the device before such as freezes syncing troubles and the fact that it will not play my music or videos.

When I got back Christmas day after not having my music for an entire trip to see my annoying family, I Connected my Zune to my computer. The Zune software wiped out my entire device. Everything I spent literally days putting on my device was GONE. Even all the music/ pictures/ videos that the device came with were gone. Even the games I had to reinstall.

[ Might I add the zune has 80gb of memory and i only used 10gb. 6.5gb of that was reserved for music sent to me and was actually just reserved space ]

I connected the device and it instructed me to reinstall the Firmware. I followed the instructions and put some of my music back on. I tried to put 3 or 4 podcasts on my device to see if it would work and it froze the device.

Today I called the Zune tech support and guess what they told me? Try restaring the device... Didn't see that coming... Anyway the tech told me to reinstall the firmware (ironically the same thing the software instructed me to do two days prior) and that didn't help at all. At least it's on record that this happened which I'm sure is by far not the first time.

So my problem remains unresolved. The tech told me that my only other option is to send the device in to be serviced. Personally I don't think this would resolve the issue because it's not a problem with MY device but rather all Microsoft Zunes