My girlfriend brings me a Western Digital 40g and wants to know if I can recover some data from it for a fellow teacher/friend of hers.  I said sure.

Initially the problem was the drive making horrible noises and clicking, not allowing them to boot.

I get it here and plug it in and it works fine so I burn the requested data to a DVD and they're all set.  So I think I'll keep the hard drive myself as an extra since I can't figure out what they're talking about and they had already bought a new one.  The hard drive wasn't half full.

Then it starts....  the clicking and sputtering...  worst ever, never heard anything like it.

So I take the hard drive out and disassemble it for whatever reason (I'm not sure) and put it back together.  It was still clicking and going ape shit so I then took it into my hallway PC and mounted it vertically and it's been running noiselessly and perfect ever since.

I'm currently running a list of HD diagnostics from DOS to try to determine what's up.

Any ideas?