My anomalies also cleared up last night. The DIRT team has issued an RMA but I am not sure if I want to swap out receivers now.
Seems like your problem is by far the worst and I now concede Zach was probably right to begin with. Probably was a temporary glitch in the guide or guide download process messing up the rest of us. As an expert, you might try the drive manufacturer's utilities on the disk and see what they say. Were you able to move your programs onto an EHD?