mac cloning

my friends mac died a few weeks past and he went and got the new one so he gave me his old one when it turns on its just a flashing folder with a question mark i know this means the drive is possibly dead i have a new hdd for it but no os disks for it is it possible to clone my current macbook on to the other one and if so is there a free way


p.s. sorry about the run on

I believe you can only 'Clone' the harddrive from another Mac and put it on the new one, if they are the same hardware.