"Not responding" is not the same as "crashing." And I will guess that your system is not responding because you are having a series of temporary, recoverable read errors. Each of these recoverable read errors follows this basic process:
- Drive attempts to read a sector and cannot do so successfully.
- Drive waits until the platters rotate the sector by the head again (8.33 milliseconds).
- Drive attempts to read the sector and cannot do so successfully
- Drive waits until the platters rotate, 8.33 milliseconds again.
- Drive attempts to read again.
- <repeat dozens or even hundreds of times>
If, eventually, the sector is read successfully, the drive sends the data to the OS, and the failure is considered "temporary and correctable." But it may have taken a very long time to successfully read one sector. Then, repeat this process for the next sector.
When sectors fail, they often do so in groups, as most physical problems that cause sector failure occur over areas that comprise multiple sectors.