Hard Drive format suddenly RAW

[Kesava]

The hard drive in my father's laptop is a 750GB WD and after it failed to boot I investigated and found that it refused to mount and that the format had changed to RAW.

I researched and couldn't find a solution except to run a program such as TestDisk to find the missing partition and hopefully repair the necessary parts to make it mountable again.

Unfortunately after running TestDisk overnight, the progress is 130/344253 and I'm not keen to wait centuries for it to finish.

Any advice would be appreciated. There's quite a few important files that I really need to recover.

 

[johnb35]

Run Western Digital Drive diagnostic on it. Most likely drive is shot but hopefully not.

 

[beers]

Were there any incidents immediately before the issue was exhibited? Like, oh I threw the laptop in my trunk, or it took a slight spill while on?

There's quite a few important files that I really need to recover.

This is why we make backups, especially if you are relying solely on a mechanical laptop drive.

 

[Kesava]

Run Western Digital Drive diagnostic on it. Most likely drive is shot but hopefully not.

It keeps crashing after I accept the terms and conditions. I'm running Windows 10 technical preview so that might be why and I did try compatibility settings. I'll get my netbook back from repair tomorrow hopefully so I'll try and run it from there.

Were there any incidents immediately before the issue was exhibited? Like, oh I threw the laptop in my trunk, or it took a slight spill while on?

This is why we make backups, especially if you are relying solely on a mechanical laptop drive.

There wasn't a big traumatic incident, however there were ongoing issues with I think the sata connector on the side that connects to the motherboard. It would sometimes not work unless positioned in a certain way with the help of some spacers.

I do have a backup but unfortunately it's really not recent enough.

From what I can tell, TestDisk is detecting read errors on each part that it scans, which is why it's taking forever, here is a screenshot: http://c2n.me/3gYABho

I'm wondering if I should leave it running as perhaps it will go faster once it's through the bad parts.