Strange SSD problem

I had a strange problem the other day with my macbook pro. I seem to have fixed it without really knowing what the problem was. Maybe some of the resident mac experts here could shed some light?

I was using it the other day and I noticed that chrome was really unresponsive and glitchy. Then I noticed that my internal SSD system drive wasn't on my desktop anymore, nor could I access it via the finder. I could see the drive was mounted from disk utility and when I right clicked it from there and selected "reveal in finder" I could access the drive and open files etc... It was definitely still working as it's the drive that the OS is installed on and the machine booted ok.

I tried repairing the disk and permissions in disk util. I ran clean up scripts in onyx etc... Rebooted a few times. Still no sign of the drive in finder or on the desktop where it normally would be.

I then followed some instructions from crucial to power cycle the ssd. Involved leaving the machine sitting in Startup Manager mode for a while then removing the drive from the laptop for 10 seconds before reconnecting.

This didn't work so I resorted to a full system restore using timemachine. And this seems to have sorted it out.

No idea what the issue was or if it's a sign that the drive is on the way out, or whether it's an OS problem.

fyi I have a secong internal drive installed for audio/videO files. It's in the optical bay on the sata bus. This drive was still visable and accessible.