A year and a half ago the hard drive in my hp went out and i took it to a friend who knows alot about computers and he replaced the hard drive. Two weeks ago that hard drive started making a clicking sound and would not let the computer boot up. the hard drive that replaced the first one was manufactured in june of 2000 so it's a little over three years old. my question is this: should i just go get another hard drive or look for possible other reasons that two hard drives have gone out in the past year and a half? i'd hate to go buy another hard drive and it go out because the psu is sending surges or something. any help would be appreciated.

Clicking is usually a sign that your HDD is on the way out. You may be able to retrieve any lost data by installing it as a slave....it's worth a shot. You can try going to the manufacturer's website & downloading their diagnostic software...it creates a boot floppy so that you can diagnose the problem, even if the drive won't boot. Most will print out an error report & if it's within the warranty period, you may be able to RMA it. It would be interesting to know the brand...I personally have replaced more Seagates for people than any other drive.

Try the advice from Jam or call the support.
You my be lucky about the warranty because of the replacement.
I had to replace an IBM drive twice and asked about the warranty expire date and was surprised that it was a few months longer than 3 years.

BTW:
I didn't asked why, not that it was only a fault!

ok i used the diagnostic tool and it gave me an error code, but my hard drive is no longer under warranty. not too worried about this, but should i worry that two hard drives have gone out in the past 3 years? i'd hate to put a new one in and have it fried in two months. are there any other reasons why two might have failed in that length of time? power supply maybe?