Usually /var/log/messages is very verbose with harddrive messages. I'm not sure what exactly to look for, but glance through there to see if you see any warning signs. If it is indeed a harddrive error.

What I'd do is boot the machine into single user mode (maybe off of Tom's root boot or similar), turn off any swap space, and then run memtest, or some other resource (non-disk) intensive job. If the system still hangs, you know it's not the disk, running hdparm on the disk after a stability test may be enlightening. Of course this may not prove anything unless you can manage to boot the system using the same kernel and drivers as is stored on the disk. In any case, you'd probably better back up any important data on that disk.

Michael Hrivnak wrote:
What sort of problem does this sound like? How can I further diagnose it?

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