15GB of other files, must restore. How to avoid losing data?

[PaulFXH]

I've got a 3G iPhone with 3.1.3 firmware.
After messing around to try and get the iPhone to sync on a netbook with Ubuntu, I've managed to remove all of my movies and music.
Silly mistake.
However, movies and music were easy to get back but I also managed to pick up 15 GB of 'Other' files (see screenshot).
As this takes up more than half of my total storage, I want to get rid of it.
In googling around, however, it seems I have to use the Restore function which means removing all of my data.
Now, although everything is backed up, I presume that if I restore from backup, I'm going to end up once again with 15GB of Other Files.
Alternatively, if I sync from the iTunes library (on my Mac), will my apps with data be effected?
In particular, will I lose all of my books in Stanza and my feeds in Free RSS?
Would appreciate any advice.
Thanks

 

[Gav2k]

As long as you have sync'd your contact with the address book etc then you can restore as new.

 

[-aggie-]

Have a look at my post here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/9667577/

Perhaps one of the links will help you without restoring.

 

[PaulFXH]

As long as you have sync'd your contact with the address book etc then you can restore as new.

Thanks for the reply.
As I mentioned, my main concern is losing all of the books I have stored in my ebook reader Stanza.
Now, these books are not sync'd through iTunes at all although the Stanza app is.
What I would like to know is if I re-sync my iTunes apps from my iTunes library, will Stanza come back with all the books still loaded (I've over 100 books) or just as Stanza sans books?
If not, I'll be forced to restore them all from Calibre which means emailing each book individually -- a lot of "unnecessary" work.

 

[PaulFXH]

Thanks to -aggie- for the links. Learned a lot from them but didn't solve the problem.
Or is it really a problem?
See, I've got 21 movies on my iPhone which, in .avi format, add up to a little over 20GB.
I used AirVideoFree to convert to .m4v format before copying them to the iPhone.
All the movies play perfectly, no problems. However, there's just no way that 20GB of .avi is going to convert to 7.30 GB in .m4v format.
So, maybe it's what AirVideoFree does but it looks very much to me like the videos are actually spread over the 7.3GB called videos AND the 15GB called Other.
Therefore I don't have a problem.
Nevertheless, this situation is confusing and if anybody cares to disagree with me, please feel free.