A real dead hard drive

A computer which is supposed to be under my care has seemingly gone belly up. When it starts it counts the RAM and then when it tests the drives (1xHDD and 1xoptical) it lists them and then says "System Drive failed." Then there's a nasty clicking sound. That's it, until you shut it down.

Normally I'd simply write this one off and may be even find some emergency data recovery service.

However, the computer is "on the bench" already because it caught what I gather is potentially a nasty virus - Windows XP Recovery. I thought it was gone, as none of the items on the MG checklist (MBAM, SAS particularly) came up with anything non-kosher. However, I now can't check this - or even run the logs past you - as everything is now in a computer which will not even finish the POST.

I know that "XP Recovery" can make it impossible to do anything but re-installing Windows. Is it possible that a virus could cause this to happen (on several re-boots) to hardware, or have I simply got to a point where the HDD packed it in, as HDDs will do.