A failing hard drive will most definitely cause any system to hang. It does ultimately depend on the drive, it's firmware, and how the firmware handles hitting a bad sector. For example WD Reds and Purples (rebranded Reds with different firmware) are designed for continuous uptime, so they handle bad sectors much better in the sense that they generally will keep going. Some other drives stall out and by the time it returns to normal after the seizure, the system is too far gone and needs a power cycle.
As long as the drive is not formatted at any point between switching from an NVR and Windows, it will NOT be written to jeopardizing video stored on it. Most NVRs use proprietary and encrypted file systems that are typically never recognized in a Windows or Mac environment (can't speak about Linux though, since most are embedded Linux devices)
Hook the drive back up to Windows, and download and run HDSentinelPro.
http://www74.zippyshare.com/v/m5x2jkaH/file.html
Post screenshots, it will give a very detailed analysis of the drive. At present, I have a 32CH Hikvision NVR that will go months with 0 problems and out of nowhere rebooting a few times a day. The hard drives are all new, but for some reason they're causing the system to flip out. They pass all of the SMART checks so I'm not sure why this happens. But HDSP is a great tool to get a better idea of what exactly is going on with the drive in question. In my case, I don't know which of the 4 are causing the problem.
My very first camera setup (designed, implemented, and installed at age 12) has been in service since 2007 using an AVer NV6480EXP capture card. This has by far been the most reliable system I've ever worked with, and it is still in service to this very day. The hard drive in it at present was installed 2 years later in 2009, because the previous one was not capable of retaining a long enough record time, even on motion. In 2009, 2TB was a prize, it was a $380 hard drive back then. Here are the stats on it, taken about a week ago: (most notably the runtime)
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