Clicking noises can commonly be heard when a laptop’s hard drive is either failing or having difficulty spinning up. To help diagnose and prevent further data loss to the hard drive, it is recommended to do the following:

1. Backup your data: It is important to ensure your data is backed up to another device, such as a USB drive, external hard drive or cloud storage service.
2. Run virus/malware scans: It is also important to ensure your laptop is free of any malicious software. This can be done through recommended antivirus programs such as Windows Defender or McAfee.
3. Check Hard Drive Health: Finally, it is necessary to check the health of the hard drive. This can be done by downloading third party programs, such as HDD Scan, CrystalDiskInfo, or Hard Disk Sentinel.

If all of these steps do not help improve the hard drive performance, it is likely that the hard drive is failing and it is recommended to contact a local technician for proper diagnosis and data recovery.