Hard Drive Causing fps issues?

I just put together a new rig for the first time.
AMD Athlon x4 750k 3.4Ghz 4 Cores 4 Threads
NVIDIA GTX 750 SC 2GB GDDR5
WD Refurbished 250GB 7200RPM HDD
4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Corsair vengeance blue
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.
Drivers updated, Temps all cool. Prime 95 stress tested all under 60C

my hard drive has been making a really loud noise screeching etc.
does this most of the time even when idle.

Minecraft runs fine but when i booted it up first time the fps dropped from 230 to 0 and crashed
Black ops 2 my fav game ran maxed out but stuttered sometimes witch got annoying and would randomly freeze sometimes! Sometimes fps was good sometimes unstable it would go from 125 fps to 30 fps witch made it rather unplayable.
battlefield 3 ran maxed out and also froze sometimes fps drops from 90 to 2 and stutters throughout the game only seemed to get worse.

UPDATE***
i have sent the hard drive in for an RMA to WD
it seemed to be defective.

is that what is causing this issue? Because i don't know what else to do!
oh and psu is a corsair 430W

Please tell me it was the hard drive. Because i really just want to play my games without these issues!

Yes it sounds like your hard drive is bad. But also, your psu is pretty weak. You should get one with at least 700w.

Bad hard drive. No HDD should be making any noises, especially screeching or clicking. That is the problem with "refurbs", you are trusting some third party repair firm to re-certify a used or returned HDD. If someone returned it, then it had problems in the first place. No person, other than factory, can fix a defective HDD. Even then, some testing by factory may miss an intermittent fault.

See if you have some warranty on that HDD, return it as quick as you can. If it was a "tail light warranty" (ie none…), then you are out of luck, don't buy refurb HDD any more.

Other device that are "refurbs" may be a good deal, like other components that either work or fail (like PSU). However, HDD are very temperamental. Also If it possible the HDD was damaged during shipping - improperly packaged?