Recovering hard drive on water damaged macbook?

Maybe. I would have to say that it depends on whether the hard drive itself was damaged from the spill, and if so, how much is your data worth to you?

Let's assume for the moment that the physical hard drive was not damaged. That makes your data recovery fairly easy. Remove the hard drive from the computer using the directions found in [this document|http://manuals.info.apple.com/en US/MacBook_13inch_HardDriveDIY.pdf]. Purchase a hard drive enclosure that will work with the drive. Connect the hard drive to another Mac - voila! Your data should be there.

If your drive's mechanism has been damaged, you may want to look at one of the data recovery services such as [DriveSavers|http://drivesavers.com] [Ontrack Data Recovery|http://www.ontrack.com] or [Lazarus|http://www.lazarus.com]. While these companies have great expertise for recovering data from even badly damaged drives, they cannot make guarantees, and they are not cheap. Some offer a "no cure, no pay" service where if they don't get your data back, you owe them nothing.

Best of luck.

Spilling water is one thing. Getting soaked is another. You stand a good chance of being able to recover data if your drive was OK. If it was submerged underwater long enough, hard drives aren't sealed against moisture and water damage would likely destroy the drive.