iPod not wanting to restore or format

Okay, so i've had this iPod my friend upgraded with a new msata 512 gb SSD which he format as fat32. once i plugged it in, it recognized the device but when i went to sync it failed and said it had to be restored. This is where things get tricky..

Okay so I see the Apple Media Device on Disc Utility, but its only showing as 8KB and when i try to restore it (no matter what file system) it fails and says "Can't write to last block of device. I've tried to restore on a windows, mac, and linux computer and can't get this thing to do anything. The hard drive worked fine when it had it for the first few hours before it synced. It's a brand new hard drive, just kind of bugging me why i can't get it to do anything. iTunes Restore doesn't work as well, it's given the same error on all 3 operating systems. Just really strange :(