I bought a WD 500GB SATA hard disk from newegg. I installed it in my computer. And then I formatted it. Every once in a while, it will make a peculiar ticking sound. It seemed to make this ticking sound every once in a while in the FEAR2 demo, accompanied by brief lag. I tested it in HDTach, and it was fast, so i have no idea if the disk is bad or not. Should I RMA it, wait a little bit, and then RMA or what?

RMA it now. It's only going to get worse and if you wait when it does get worse / fail it'll take more data. Start the RMA process ASAP and get any important data off it now.

Well, good thing all I have on it is TF2, and Fear2 demo.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Well, good thing all I have on it is TF2, and Fear2 demo.

Remember to back up any game saves you want to keep

Same happend to my WD 500gb. When it did that ticking noise it was like my comp was taking a break with reading data.

Took the 500GB Samsung spinpointT or something similliar.

E: I still have the WD one. Just planning to use it like a secondary HDD.

It doesn't sound like any of these sounds: http://datacent.com/hard_drive_sounds.php

It's more of a scraping sound. I don't think it's a head crash, though. I've stopped hearing it, or at least gotten used to it. I'll play the FEAR 2 demo again (I didn't finish it, I died after the sniper bit ), and see if I still get the sound.

You could try running Checkdisk on it.

Quote from amp88 :

You could try running Checkdisk on it.

No bad sectors were found. I've read several reports on random forums of this sound, and it seems like alot of people have noticed it.

EDIT: It's a variable RPM drive, is it possible that I am just hearing it spin up?