"Maximal Mount Count"?

[u8rupert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

When booting Linux the other night, I received this message:

"/dev/hdb1 has reached maximal mount count, check forced"

This continued for each partition of my Linux drive.

'course, fsck took a LONG time to finish - upwards of five
minutes.  It found a few non-contiguous areas and fixed them.

When the message popped up, I froze.  I don't recall ever
seeing this before, and I have no idea what it means.  I haven't
seen it since. 

If anyone knows what this means and why it popped up, I'd
be delighted to know.  I'm not sure if it's something I did
or if it's just a forced fsck for some odd reason.

--Matt