Disk Drive Error and Freezing during Disk Check

[True_Orb]

Lately I've found that my computer will more or less randomly switch to a blue screen that says "An error has occurred and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage." or something to that extent.

The only troubleshooting help I got was to run a disk check upon startup to check for errors, but I have tried twice now and the disk check freezes at 55 percent!

The freezes occurred first while defragmenting and I believe this happened after I deleted (without uninstalling, my mistake) a large file group (Steam, an online gaming prog that runs upon startup for things like HL2.)
I am not sure how this could have effected things, but that was the last significant thing I remember donig before noticing this. I have not downloaded any drivers recently.

My Norton and AVG virus scans turned up nothing.

I have backed up most of my needed files onto CD just in case, but I'd rather NOT format my hard drive unless there's nothing else I can do.


Any ideas of causes and solutions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[office politics]

sounds like a failing HD. the HD manufactuer may provided tools to test the drive. goto their website and look under support, downloads, or diagnostics

 

[True_Orb]

Thanks, but when I tried to do the Seagate drive diagnostic it said that "SMART self-test is not supported for this drive. This may be due to a limitation in teh Windows driver for the controller that the drive is attached to or the drive may not support the SMART self-test. In either case, this is not a failure of the drive."

 

[True_Orb]

I ran a seagate test and it said there was a "Bad Connection" Error.
Even though it said it would take 90 seconds for every GB of space to check, immediately after I had it start the test it turned up a "Bad Connection" error, and said that the damage to my hard disk is sufficient to have it replaced.

Is this definite? Will formatting help at all, could there have been an error considering the "Bad Connection" error and how fast it turned up the problem...or do I have to haggle w/ Seagate over a new HDD?