weird disk related panic

[James Frazer]

Well, I lost the crash dump somehow.  But the fact that upon reboot it
complained about having no hard drive certainly further suggests a hardware
problem.

I'm somewhat confused as to why turning it off and then back on again
makes the hd suddenly work again.  I hate this inconsistency and half
working nonsense... maybe I'll get lucky and it'll start on fire and
eliminate the possibility that I'll foolishly keep using it as is ;-)