Well, it just so happened that I did notice the reboot last night, when it just cut off my moving of 500GB of files to one backup HDD and the defrag that was running on another. Neither of those just relaunched themselves.
Did you notice any warnings that there would be a reboot while you were setting up the file copy or defrag? How many hours, cumulative, had you spent in Windows in the week leading up to this reboot? I think the answers will reveal that my point is being illuminated nicely, and I thank you in advance for the assistance in this matter.