HD Crash Related to Gnome?

[Jay Bloodworth <jay dokodiner com>]

This is probably offtopic, but perhaps not, and some kind soul may be
able to offer some constructive comments in any event.

Woke up this morning to find my RedHat 7 - Gnome 1.4B - Pentium III box
was locked up: the screen was stuck on a screensaver frame, the HD light
was lit, and no amount of mouse jiggling or key punching would wake it.
Tried to reboot - it couldn't find lilo - used a boot disk - couldn't
find the root partition.  After about 30 minutes I decided to turn it
off and come back later, assuming I'd probably have to reinstall Linux
and perhaps need a new HD.

I came back about an hour later, intending to check the bios in case
some setting there had gotten screwed up.  LILO came right up, and I
booted right into gdm (after fsck scrubbed some dirty partitions).  I
didn't notice anything obvious in the logs indicating the source of the
problem.

The GNOME related portion of the question is this: Is there anything in
1.4beta that may have caused this.  I'm wondering in particular about
medusa, since I've read that people have had problems with it.

If it's not software, I assume it's a thermal issue, though this machine
is usually up for weeks at a time with no problems.  I do occasionally
hear rattling from the fan, but it usually stops after a few minutes.
If anyone has experienced anything like this before, I'd appreciate
hearing what preventitive or corrective measure you took.

Thanks,
Jay