[ubuntu] Starling Filesystem Errors on Boot

[JeffV]

I got the Starling netbook a couple months ago and started seeing this problem a few weeks ago.

Almost every time I boot the system, it starts the Ubuntu splash screen and the bar starts filling, then it suddenly goes to a screen reporting file system errors on sda1 and does a bunch of automated things to try and fix the problem. It usually ends up fixing it and I'm able to eventually reboot and everything is fine (no loss of data from what I can tell).

A couple times, it would try to fix things, then give a graphic screen saying "Could not start the X server due to some internal error". Then I would log into a basic console, do reboot, and on the splash screen get a "Unclean shutdown, checking drivers".

At this point, it then says /dev/sda1 contains a file system with errors...
"/dev/sda1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY..."

It then starts a maintenance shell, and I follow the instructions on the screen to run fsck. I get occasional message of "Error reading block xxx...while getting next inode from scan. Ignore error<y>?" and "Force rewrite<y>?" I just say yes to all of these. it finishes and I do a Ctrl-D to restart. Then everything seems to be working fine again.

Is this a sign of a bad hard drive? It's done this several times now, this most recent being the worst since it took longer to go through and fix all the errors.