First Kernal Panick

I've had my iBook since last April with no problems at all, Just got in and plugged my external keyboard in and up came the grey restart screen of death. My first thought was to repair permission etc seen as its been a while since I did it last anyway and clicking Verify Disk thows up the following error:

Disk Utility said:

Volume Header needs minor repair
The volume needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit


1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

Click to expand...

I've already backed up all of my data on to my external hard drive and I'll give Apple a call in the morning (its 00:35 right now) but I was just hoping that someone could shed some light on what the problem actually is. Is it a physical problem with my hard drive that means I'll need to get it replaced? Is there anything I can or should do software wise?

My iBook is the last revision that doesn't feature the motion sensors so I could quite easily have caused damage by moving it while he hard drive was writing/reading and there is a good possibly that this could have happened, I do move my iBook around a fair bit while its on.

Anyway, I'm just a little worried about my Mac, I've become quite attached to it these past few months so any words of wisdom from anyone who's been through this would be quite comforting.

This is an old thread, but I'll add my recent experience to it. I got the same Kernel screen. I wound up having to have a new hard drive installed to fix the issue. No issues whatsoever since having the new drive put in. Just my $0.02 in case someone runs into the same issue.