iPod 4g won't sync under Fat32

[An Epic Death]

I had an old iPod 4g whose drive had (completely) failed on me (wouldn't be recognized by ANY computer, mac or windows xp) years past in my drawer, and decided to charge it overnight and plug it in. To my delight, the folder icon went away, my computer (intel mac, had had PPC when iPod was previously used) recognized the disk, and it worked flawlessly. Great. So I looked around to see if anything had changed in the ancient world of 4G iPods, and discovered ROCKbox.  I plugged it into a windows machine I had access to (running Vista), restored it (using iTunes) to Fat32 in order to install ROCKbox. While running Fat32, however, my device locks up after copying a certain amount of data (using iTunes or otherwise. about 50ish high quality and fairly lengthy tracks.) After this point, iTunes locks up, as does the iPod, which will not allow any copying despite being restarted and plugged back in etc. I had originally thought that it might be an issue with ROCKbox or the bootloader, especially since the installer failed to actually copy the .rockbox folder to my iPod like it claimed it did (I had to do this manually; it wasn't present on the drive). However, after removing ROCKbox,, deleting the drive with mac Disk Utility, formatting the drive with Windows Explorer, and restoring it to FAT32 on Vista once more, the problem persisted. When I restore it to (NSFT? the default OSX iTunes format...) it copies without problems. So, are there any incompatibilities with this model and FAT32? Has anyone else experienced this or found a workaround? Or is there another method of restoring to FAT32 that wouldn't cause these issues?

Thanks!

[bluebrother]

While running Fat32, however, my device locks up after copying a certain amount of data (using iTunes or otherwise. about 50ish high quality and fairly lengthy tracks.) After this point, iTunes locks up, as does the iPod, which will not allow any copying despite being restarted and plugged back in etc.

Sounds like a dying hard disk

I had originally thought that it might be an issue with ROCKbox or the bootloader, especially since the installer failed to actually copy the .rockbox folder to my iPod like it claimed it did (I had to do this manually; it wasn't present on the drive).

There is a known issue with Rockbox Utility on Mac, and the bootloader is not the .rockbox folder. Please read the issues list on the Rockbox Utiltiy wiki page. Besides, on a mac this folder is hidden so you might not see it.

Also, structuring a post by using paragraphs makes it much more readable and increases the possibility of fast and good responses. Your blob is quite hard to read due to the lack of paragraphs.

[An Epic Death]

"There is a known issue with Rockbox Utility on Mac, and the bootloader is not the .rockbox folder. Please read the issues list on the Rockbox Utiltiy wiki page. Besides, on a mac this folder is hidden so you might not see it."

Actually, I knew about the issues with the Utility; according to its project page the installation options on the first tab are broken; the page recommended the other tabs, which are what I used.
     Also, I'm well aware of the difference between a bootloader and system folder . The bootloader installed correctly, and after manual placement of the .rockbox folder (my finder is configured via the terminal command to display hidden files and directories), I had no issues with the ROCKbox operating system (great job on that btw... so many more features! ). As stated in my original post, my issues are with FAT32.

"Sounds like a dying hard disk"

     Well, as I said, my drive had actually been dead for several years when it miraculously sprung to life the other day (probably due to the rather significant changes in both hardware and software since then). However, it appears to be quite stable and fully functional under the standard (HFS+ not NFTS, my mistake) formatting. So it seems rather odd that it would function perfectly under one system and fail epicly on another. I additionally tried formatting it on my mac via the provided instructions in the ROCKbox manual. This brought the same result, however, so the problem isn't the Vista computer. Also, (I haven't copied enough data to be conclusive on this, but...) it appears to work via FAT32 on Vista. Therefore, I don't think it's the drive... FAT32/OS 10.5.6 interaction is the only remaining variable, so I know it's the cause.
     Does ROCKbox work on any alternate filesystems? Or is there a more favorable partition scheme? I had hoped that it would run on HFS+ as iPodLinux does... I was looking forward to using the triple boot system .