I have a Toshiba satellite L355D that has just recently turned three years old. It's been working fine up until about two weeks ago when I noticed a clicking sound coming from the left bottom side of the laptop. Now, having no clue what this was, or what component it was coming from, I just assumed it wasn't a problem and continued on normally. Then, my computer was in sleep mode for 5 days, ran out of battery, and when I tried to re-start it it started normally, then abruptly shut off about five seconds into the start. I tried just about everything to get it to start normally; going into safe mode and running every virus scanner I had, doing start up repair, etc. Then, I noticed that I would be able to have my computer on longer if I let it cool down first. Today was my first day taking apart a laptop in an effort to clean out the fan. This resulted in the removal of a mouse-sized chunk of condensed dust that was keeping the fan from moving at all when I held my vacuum over it. I thought that this was a legitimate explanation for why it was clicking and thought it would all go away when I re-started the computer. This was not so (obviously). In taking apart the laptop, I learned that the clicking was coming from the same area that the hard drive was in, and so I turned to the almighty god google for assistance, and that's how I came to the conclusion that this is the click of death. However, the click I have is rythmic (exactly one second of high pitched noise then click, no variation in tempo whatsoever) and it is muted, which makes it slightly different from the videos I've seen. Regardless, I tried to get my information off of the hard drive asap, but this is my eighth time trying to back up, and each time it is canceled unexpectedly. I haven't been around it when it crashes except for the most recent time so I can say that it stopped around 18%. Now, I have no problem with the fact i'm probably going to have to replace my hard drive, I just want to get my information off, and I need help. Badly.
If the hard drive is not dead, you have several basic choices for immediate relief: put the drive in an external USB enclosure and connect to another computer, or install it in a desktop as an additional drive and attempt to read it that way or get a data recovery outfit to see what they can do. The first choice can be cheap, choice two is cheapest of all and choice three can be really expensive. For the first two choices, file systems need to be compatible. Others here will probably give you guidance for data recover with the disk in situ, but whatever you do you need to develop a backup and recovery plan for your data. To paraphrase the real estate industry, Backup, Backup, Backup. Routinely backing up data is just a really good insurance policy.