It is only a 10gb drive, and I can easily fit all my music that I had on the rio on the other drive, but .. space is space..

If you like, you can copy all the FIDs from the "suspected bad" drive to the "suspected good" drive using the copy operation described in the Drive Upgrade Guide. Then remove the 10 and live with the player that way for a while as you wait for a replacement cable.

Did you also take a close look at the IDE header, as shown in the photo in the FAQ?