Windows 10: Thinking my internal C drive is dying

I woke up one morning to a disconcerting noise. The closest thing to the noise I can describe it sounds like someone walking through water or xmas wrapping paper being crumpled. I know the old mechanical hdd in my desktop would start making loud mechanical noises. I suspect these smaller laptop drives with smaller drive heads and platters would make a different noise. I thought at first it was my external usb drive going bad so I spent about 7 hours moving software from it to WD 25EE MY Book USB drive. But when I started to move my computer to my bedroom. (I had closed the lid so it went in sleep mode) I heard that horrendous noise I heard from the morning time. Ugh it was confirmed that noise was coming from my internal computer.

I had tried before to let windows do an image of the C drive but Window would not let me do it. I can't remember the message from Windows why. So at this point I need to do either a clone or mirror image of Drive C.

I have several questions. I was going to do the clone to my external WD MY Book. It is a 2.7gb formatted usb drive. Plenty of room for the clone or mirror. My current internal drive Hitachi Travelstar 640gb has three partitions on it A Drive C which has all the Windows 10 system files, HP programs and some misc files that I use to deal with image and movie files. The Drive D holds the recovery software that came with the computer when I bought it. The Drive E has the backup HP programs. My computer came with Windows 7 64 bit Home and Family Addition. But I am currently running Windows 10 64 bit Home edition that was upgraded by MS about two years ago. So Would I still need the recovery partition when I clone the drive C?

I also have some document files and my music library on Drive C. Should I just copy these files over to the WD My Book drive. Or Should I just have a clean drive except for the utility programs that came with the WD my book hdd?

What is a good recommendation as far as cloning software goes? Clonezilla is a freeware program but it looks like a lot of hoops to jump to get it to run. Acronis True Image seems to be a popular choice but it is pricey and I hate monthly fees. I already have enough of those each month anyway. I guess beggars cannot be choosy.

Here is my understanding why I need to clone the drive C. Most computer makers put a proprietary marker on the hdd that came with the computer. So just backing up would not work in the computer. I learned that a long time ago..

Thank you in advance for any help on this manner. I have not heard the crinkling sound but I think it would be wise to get rid of that Hdd. I bought the computer in Dec 2011 so the computer is almost 6.5 years old. I would think that I am on the outer edge of useful life.

:)