And A fsck It Was

Seems like I've been a bit harsh on my initial report...
The HDD seems to be fine after a manual fsck and a reboot.
Right now installing updates on the lappie (even a new kernel!) will see how this goes, etc.
And a reboot after, and everything seems to be just fine.

To actually be able to execute the fsck had to go thru Linux Mint's GRUB option: Advanced Options, and the Recovery.
There I was able to execute: fsck /dev/mapper/mint--vg-root
A few Yes, and things were back to normal.