Quote:
I let it sit there for about 30 minutes, with no progress shown on the bar, before i shut down emplode and loaded it back up.

Not long enough. Read this.

By killing it in the middle of the FSCK, you probably messed up the drives, so you'll likely need to do the hand-FSCK procedure outlined there. After that, put hijack on it and disable the periodic checking so this doesn't happen again.
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Tony Fabris