Click of Death

I heard that your hard drive dies when it starts "clicking" and was wondering how loud of a click it is. My hard drive has been making louder and louder sounds over the last three weeks when it reads and writes. Last week it was about the same noise as my family laptop; today it's about the noise my family computer with 95 on it made back in the late 90s. When do you think it will die, and what noise will it make prior to breaking down?

(I know my hard drive is fatally ill since I found it with "Load boot device" message when I woke up yesterday. Ran disk check, no data errors.)