System lost one of its network interfaces

[Patrick <patrick@kirks.net>]

Hi all, 

Over the last few days, a server has been throwing out messages like
the following at the same time every morning:

Mar 16 06:15:20 dalek -- MARK --
Mar 16 06:25:20 dalek kernel: hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 {
Busy }
Mar 16 06:25:20 dalek kernel: hda: no DRQ after issuing WRITE
Mar 16 06:25:20 dalek kernel: ide0: reset: success
Mar 16 06:25:26 dalek syslogd 1.3-3#31: restart.
Mar 16 06:25:31 dalek kernel: hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 {
Busy }
Mar 16 06:25:31 dalek kernel: hda: no DRQ after issuing WRITE
Mar 16 06:25:31 dalek kernel: ide0: reset: success
Mar 16 06:25:31 dalek kernel: hda: status timeout: status=0xd0 {
Busy }
Mar 16 06:25:31 dalek kernel: hda: no DRQ after issuing WRITE
Mar 16 06:25:32 dalek kernel: ide0: reset: success
Mar 16 06:55:20 dalek -- MARK --
Mar 16 07:15:20 dalek -- MARK --

This morning, it went a step further and lost its external network interfaces.  
Its on a remote  site. As couldn't ssh in, the machine had to be rebooted.

Does anyone recognise this problem?

Also, when someone was in front of the system and logged on as root,
they got  lots and lots of samba messages overwriting the screen.
Does anyone think this is a seperate problem or could it be related?

Thanks in advance,

Patrick