Bought American Lion and redownloaded the free books plus a few more. All seems good now though I haven't hooked up to the PC/Calibre again yet. Will play around with that later and make sure I don't have problems again.
EDIT: Hooked it up, backed all my books up to the PC using Calibre and have no problems (have the SD card in, but nothing on it yet, but seemed fine from testing it earlier).
Just bad luck I guess, must have pulled the USB out with out disconnecting once, or it was from when I tried to use my usual USB cable which is hooked to my monitor and it did nothing (assume it didn't have enough power) before using another USB cable to the front USB ports directly on the PC etc.
Oh well, just out the $10 for American Lion, and for another book I was thinking of reading that the prior owner had left on there--naturally the other books of his that I have no interest in are fine!