Install worked for a day now iPod stuck at splashscreen

[Woppp]

Hi there, I'm new to rockbox and am a bit stumped as to what's gone wrong.
History: ipod video, been running a 240Gb HDD hassle free for at least a year on the standard apple firmware (approx 140G of music)

I used the rockbox utility to install the most recent stable firmware, played around enough to be satisfied it was functional then deleted the apple directory and started copying across the music again with a normal directory structure and with new replaygain tags assigned.

1st problem: not all artists were visible in rockbox, did some reading of the manual & cranked up the number of "max files in dir" and set the database to rebuild again, easy right?

2nd problem: ipod reboots but halts at rockbox splash screen, i can enter disk mode by holding select and play when rebooting but nothing else (this is necessary for it to be visible to the PC when connected)

I tried reinstalling with the utility but no change, it just gets to the splash screen and eventually the HDD spins down and it goes back to sleep.

Any ideas would be appreciated!

(as a bonus the hold switch is busted so any tricks involving that won't work...)
*edit drive capacity

[saratoga]

Check the disk for errors and see if that helps, but it sounds like that disk may not be entirely compatible with our ATA driver. 

[Woppp]

Oh that would suck, standard firmware is "OK" for my purposes but I was looking forward to a bit more flexibility.

I've checked my emails and it's a 1.8" Toshiba MK2431GAH HDD1905 240GB 8mm ZIF Hard Drive if that means anything to anyone.
Also it's actually been running 2 years with no issue

I'll install itunes and try to recover it then start from scratch, no errors have been detected on the drive by windows.

Thanks for the quick reply