read_intr: error - broken hard disk?

[Edgar Denny <e.denny@ic.ac.uk>]

Hi all,

When I attempt to boot, I get the following
message come up several times:

hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error }
hda: read_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }

eventually followed by:

end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 0
  unable to read partition table

Is this a broken hard disk, or is this something I can fix.

Thanks,

Edgar.