A user reports a loud clicking noise coming from their PC, but the PC operates normally. Which of the following actions should the technician perform FIRST when responding to this issue?

A repetitive clicking sound from a hard drive - often called the 'click of death' - indicates the read/write heads are failing to find the correct position, signaling imminent drive failure. Backing up data immediately is the first and most critical action because the drive could fail completely at any moment. All other remediation steps are secondary to preventing permanent data loss.

Replacing the drive before backing up data risks permanent data loss if the drive is still accessible, as backup should always come first.

Formatting the drive destroys all data and is completely inappropriate when data preservation is the primary concern.

Disk Cleanup removes temporary files and reclaims space but does nothing to address a hardware failure indicated by clicking sounds.