HDD suddenly not working

Intel Celeron

Reputable
Mar 15, 2014
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So my friend just gave his western digital caviar SE 160gb SATA hdd to his uncle to copy his games. Problem is the hdd he gave had the os init and the mbr as well. So when his uncle plugged it in. it wasn't detected. The bios can only detect his uncle's hdd. he got it back to check the problem and now his rig can't detect it.:??:

HIS specs:
M2N68-AM PLUS
AMD Athlon II X3 440(I think) 3.00 Ghz
Western Digital Caviar SE 160Gb
Power Choice 60+ 580W PSU

HIS uncles Specs (Almost the same as mine)
ASUS P5S-MX SE
Intel Pentium D 3.40 Ghz (Overclocked)
Samsung 180Gb SATA Hdd
Corsair 500W PSU
nVidia GeForce 210 1Gb

My friend desperately needs his files back and he told me his hdd had a VERY faint clicking.
not sure if it's the clicking noise of death but we want to know other's opinion before buying a new one.
 
The fact that a hard drive contains an OS & MBR should not stop a computer or Windows from detecting it, so that's a "red herring" my friend.

Clicking is never a good sign with a hard drive. My verdict is that it's failed. Your friend should have kept backups of his data, doesn't he realise that hard drives fail as surely as night follows day?