Well it turned out to be the hard drive after all. I have a 2gb unit on loan to me while I anxiously await my birthday party (there's a rumor that someone bought me an 80gb unit a few months back, I still haven't had a party yet).

Hoping it's just one sector with damage that stopped the music from loading, a geek friend is setting up a Linux box in an attempt to salvage 30gb of my old music.

Thank you all for your help! It's apparent the hard drive has been replaced at least once before, so I'm investigating anything that could cause repeated hard drive failure.