sinful plume
I haven't heard of any way to restore without itunes, unfortunately.....
For what it's worth, IIRC you can use the finder app on a Mac, and you can still download iTunes on Windows (via install .exe, NOT from the windows store that will not work!) and even the latest versions still work (in my experience); but if you're on Linux you might just have to dual boot or get a secondary PC/Mac to restore the iPod
limber rampart
The issue with live USBs is that any changes made to the image has to be stored somewhere else- that can be the ram, so installing such a large program is not feasible, unless that bootable image saves the changes on the USB itself
When dual booting Linux and Windows it's also better to install Linux last
hollow crypt
iTunes recovery requires ability to flash bootloader as well as to write to the drive. As Apple never limited possibility to restore ipods nobody worked on alternative ways.
In theory it is possible to restore drive imagem, but this does not guarantee that the firmware/bootloader will be compatible and will correctly run the hdd part.
hollow crypt
Yes, the Rockbox method should work, but still you will need to put on your original firmware files - this shows only the partition table conversion.
https://www.felixbruns.de/iPod/firmware/ contains the firmware - but still requires itunes to flash/copy it.
But there is information that you can just copy the contents of the ipsw file (it is a ZIP file) and then dd the contents of the firmware file to the drive. might work, but I have never tried
the firmware partition header is funny:
