FAT Corrupted

[multarnc]

Last night, my computer was operating perfectly normal. I shut it down. I returned to it later and started it up. After POST, I got NTLDR missing. So I checked the cables. They were fine and it was being recognized in the bios normally. So I booted with a Dos boot disk and went to my C: drive. All of the file names and directories were jumbled with file attribute information. The FAT was completely corrupted.
I know it can be restored by purchasing software, but that's not my concern. I'm curious what could have caused it.
The harddrive is a Maxtor 160GB, only about 2 months old. It was freshly loaded about 2 weeks ago. It only had 3 GB of data on it. I ran Powermax, and all the tests passed and it was certified.
I have Norton Corporate Edition, with updated virus defs, and I am running Black Ice firewall, with application protection. I haven't downloaded anything, and the system has been stable.
Do you think the problem was due to a motherboard problem, an OS error, or a faulty harddrive? I know that the A7V333's have had many problems, and I have an Asus A7v600 on the way.
Any ideas would be appreciated.


Here are my system specs:
Windows 2000
Asus A7V333 rev1.01 Bios 1012
AMD Athlon 2400XP running at 2.17GHz / 333FSB X 13mult 1.72Vcore
1 GB of Kinston PC2700
Maxtor 160GB and Maxtor 40GB
MSI GeForce 2Ti
SB Audigy Platinum
Realtek NIC