Most makers have a hard disk test program. But without a make all I can give you is a generic answer and no link. Which is...
Use the drive maker's test program to find out.
Bob
My pc is currently about 4 years old and i've started to notice this inthe performance of the machine. Last night while trying to download some files and play a couple of games via steam, I kept constantly getting messages about broken files and files which did not match server files etc. I then scheduled a disk check for the next bootup. BIG MISTAKE. No sooner had the windows logo loaded on my screen when the "blue screen of death" struck my monitor.
I actually managed to save a few files by booting into ubuntu from a live cd and copying my newest files to a memory stick (some files wouldn't copy "I/O failure"). I then ran the hp recovery system progream and restored my pc to mint factory settings (too bad this cant be done with hardware 
) This at first seemed to do the trick and the computer ran smoothly. Unfortunatly the recovery seems to be wearing off. The system is as clunky as ever, programs take ages to load and norton anti-virus (which came with the oem machine)refuses to uninstall.
My question is could this be a hard drive problem?
Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic