Started her up, as usual. Immediate loud clicking (whirring?) noise.

As said, I did my normal start up, and there was an immediate loud clicking noise, along with a whirring sound I guess? It was loud and scary enough that I shut her back down (properly) and have kept it off since. I contacted apple, went to two geek squad locations, and two computer places that I guess are apple-certified? The guy with apple recommended them because of my laptop’s age. I have legitimately never had a problem with this computer until this. Every person I talked to said it was probably the hard drive and nothing they can do. Could it be anything besides the hard drive? What else can I try? Having had zero problems with it in the last almost decade of having it, makes me skeptical that there’s “nothing that can be done”.