Stupid seagate firmware bug that causes data loss. fail for my PVR! time to backup what I can and re-install KnoppMyth/LinHES.
update: My xorg.conf got replaced some how? weird. maybe the recent apt-get update. not sure. fixed xorg.conf by setting the correct screen resolutions and driver. PVR is all happy again. drive may be heavily fragged though as some commands take a very long time to run.