My Ipod is rendered useless

Here's what happened, when I connected my ipod to my laptop it synced but then the ipod ended up with nothing on it, all my files were erased, but it was still on itunes. When I disconnected it and connected it again my ipod won't show up on itunes, I was looking for a quick fix so I formatted it, not through itunes where you can restore it cause it wouldn't even show up there, I literally formatted it with the windows, oh I also put it into disc mode before that. Sometimes I would be able to see it on itunes but it would say that I have to restore it so I did, but it would just go back to "do not disconnect". I tried to format it with the HP USB Disk thing but it would say that it is write-protected, I also tried to change that by going to the storage device policies and modify it to 0 but it would still be write protected whenever I try to format it. Is it hopeless?