Can a dying hard drive cause a computer to freeze unexpectedly?

So in the last 2 days now, it's gotten worse. PC keeps locking up, today it's completely froze on me, 3 times already.

I'm using a WD 500gb hard drive, not sure how old those drives are, but I'm sure they are more than 7 years old.

I ran chkdsk, said the volume is clean, now I'm back on the computer typing this.

Someone said its a driver issue. Well, I don't see how, all drivers are up to date, as far as the GPU drivers go, and as far as I know, USB drivers and all other drivers are up to date.

Is it possible for using an older version of Firefox to freeze the computer? It hasn't froze when playing Minecraft. Playing YouTube on Firefox, yea it's froze then on outdated Firefox usage.

I'm leaning toward the hard drive is getting ready to die. Any help you can give is very appreciated, because I don't have a clue at this point. Thanks.

Oh and currently I'm using Chrome, still have the outdated Firefox installed, and been using the outdated Firefox for many months now with no issues until about 7 days ago.

Added (1). Thanks Joe and Enigma for your guys help.

C:\Users\Tom>wmic
wmic: root\cli>diskdrive get status
Status
OK
OK
OK
OK

wmic: root\cli>

These are the results I got back using WMIC and diskdrive get status.

twiigss 01.01.2019

Diswguup

nlvrk 01.01.2019

Uninstall unnecessary software. If you have two anti-virus or two firewalls active then uninstall one of each. Then clean and defrag the hard drive. I suggest these two free programs to do both: Wisecare 365 and IOBit Uninstaller. After you've done all that then restart your PC.

Enigma 01.01.2019

I can't imagine that a failing hard drive would not give you trouble while gaming (Minecraft).

My recommendation would be to update Firefox to the latest version, and make sure that Adobe Flash is up-to-date, as well.

If you want a proper test for your aging hard drive, Google, download, and burn bootable media for "The Ultimate Boot CD". You'll find a disk diagnostic called "Data Lifeguard", from Western Digital, that can test for (and often correct) problems with their branded hard drives.

Joe 01.01.2019

Check the SMART status of the drive, it will indicate the health of the drive. SMART status can often be seen in the BIOS, or use some third party tools like SpeedFan or HDTune to read the SMART status.
A HDD that is failing will take a long time to attempt sector re-assignment. At times, it can take 30 seconds or longer. You can hear "clicking" sounds from the HDD when it is having problems reading sectors.

Adrian 01.01.2019