Hard drives can have some funny hiccups @ all times of their service life. I perhaps consider myself lucky to have had 3 x 500GB Seagate Barracudas running in RAID0 for 5 years now....

I've had a brand new 2TB Barracuda spin up & Die whilst formatting..... the replacement lasted a week so I bought a 3TB WD Red instead & it's been fine since.

@ DC

Glad you got sorted in the end fella. Fingers crossed for you getting the old drive fixed under warranty. - Nice one!