hard drive failures loading games?

hello geeks i've got a problem...or not ? ...only 1 year ago built a pc one day while loading up counter strike. my pc locked up as computers somtimes do especially online games.i frist responeded with trying to open the task manger no luck.and thats the last recourse for a froze screen. when i restarted interestingly the pc refused to boot it told me it couldn't and said i should run my copy of xp and do a repair after selecting my boot device as the rom drive...so i tried everything it seemed nothing short of divine intervention would get this to happen..my install cd was ignored it continued to tell me to insert the disk...so these things happen i thought and i needed more interesting looking junk to lay on my table anyways ..i bought a seagate 250gb high speed hd to replace it ..and it worked beautifuly windows would boot faster than ever befor i was delighted however...a mere 3 moons had past.when i attempt to play another game the frist time online as the game loaded it froze again, only this time nothig after cycling through the initial screens ..ie the gigabyte logo screen and some pc health screen that lists hardware ..i got nothing but a plain black screen...more of the same upon repeated attempts ....that hard drive was very silent and now i'm on a replacement ..does anyone have any information i'm not sure what else to say thanks