A constant rhythmic click from the HD is one of the symptoms that I've seen with a bad cable. Given that the empeg has just been travelling, and that it's supposed to be new, I'd bet on that over a bad drive.

And if that were the case, and you returned it for another one (paying for the additional shipping), there's no certainty that the next one wouldn't have the same issue. The BBS is full of instances where shipping caused the IDE cable to move enough to cause this.

But what you really want to know is that this *is* the case and that the HD itself isn't bad..have you tried connecting a serial cable and watching the boot log?