Okay. I see what you mean - the 12GB is certainly not a happy drive. But I am surprised at the location of the error. And you said that the 30 was a slave drive.

I know it will not work, but disconnect the 12GB and put the 30GB as master. This will fail, but you should basically see the drive respond to the IDE query, and you should see it fail with a panic at the end. At least this will prove that the player hardware is okay.