Strange problem fixed itself with 2 reboots - Explanation?

[Chris Neary]

Recently my Ubuntu Breezy desktop just hung in the 'dissolve' XScreensaver,
and wouldn't respond. So I did the inevitable hard power-off and restart.

When the box came back up, it just landed on a text prompt unlike my
customised Bash shell: It said there was a problem mounting /dev/hda1 on
/root which caused other problems later like it not being able to find
'/sbin/init'.

Most of the programs were unavailable - in fact I think I just had a strange
shell (ash?) with it's built-in commands. There was also a message about not
being able to start Bash because 'job control' was turned off, or something
like that.

So anyway, one more restart later and it works fine. Perfect!

What was all that about? Should I back up my hard drive to be sure in case
it's a sign of it dying? It's less than a year old! (80GB Western Digital
WD800). It's not making clicking noises yet though, so I'm doubtful of that.

Cheers,
Chris
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