New to DS Roms, question about patches

Hi,As topic title states, I'm new to this Rom deal, main reason I bought one was to backup all my games onto the drive so I don't have to carry them all around and to test out games before I buy them.Anyway, I bought a R4i Gold for my DSi and have done all the tutorials and such and have it all working and all my games downloaded. My question is I just downloaded Sonic Classic Collection and Sonic All-Star Racing and both games freeze before loading. I read various topics on the games and it seems R4 always has problems with Sega games and that there will eventually be a patch out. So about patches, is it something I have to download separately or do I just re-download the rom later on once the patch is out? Also I keep seeing people talk about "Cracking" their games, what exactly does that mean?Thank you for reading.

I'm pretty sure you have to download a patching program and the patch separately. But there's also patches that require you to edit a few values in the game.
Read around you might be able to find some.

so when or if a patch comes out for the new Pokemon games, i have to download the patches and a program? anyone got a link to this program?

The program is usually bundled with the patch. Either Delta or LunarIPS, usually.