Background:
Recently, I installed a program given to me by a friend. It ran fine for a couple months and one day while using it, my computer crashed bad. First it froze, I forced a reboot and Windows would not load after that. A clicking noise could be heard from the hard drive. I ran scandisk and that crashed and I got a message warning of "imminent hard drive failure" and advising me to replace the hard disk. I assumed it was my hard drive that crapped and had nothing to do with the program. I replaced the hard drive and it worked fine.
A week later my boss asked me about the same program and I told him I had a copy I could let him use. He installed it and the same exact scenerio described above occurred. Of course I proceeded to trash the cd with an apparently destructive program.

Question:
My friend said he downloaded the program (doh! initally I assumed he owned it). Is it possible for a virus to cause such damage? The audible clicking noise seemed like physical damage within the hard drive - the same noise could be heard on the computer at work. Or is it possible a corrupt file from the program could cause such damage?

Apparently it was the program, but any further insight would be appreciated - I can't be comfortable until I understand why something went wrong so I can possibly prevent it in the future. I know I will no longer be borrowing any programs which I don't know where they came from...