Recovering files from dead MacBook

You have to ask Apple about it, but I think the hard drive does not have to be replaced. Anyway, it is better to take it out, copy the files to another Mac or PC and transfer them again to the repaired Mac in case Apple installs a new hard drive.

A MacBook Pro has got a 2'5" SATA hard disk

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What you can do is to take out the hard drive and make sure it's not water damaged. Then, buy a USB to SATA adapter, and connect it to any PC or Mac.

You won't have any problem to recover your data if you connect it to a Mac, but you will have problems with PCs. The filesystem that OS X uses is not detected by Windows, so you will have to install an application like Paragon HFS to read the hard drive and recover your data

I would like to refer Kernel for Mac dara recovery software to recover deleted data from Mac system. For more details read this blog: http://macintoshdatarecoverysoftware.blogspot.com/2013/09/how-to-perform-complet e-mac-data-recovery.html

Put its hard drive in an enclosure; any large enough computer store should carry these.

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Yes to both questions.

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if it's about physical hdd issues, then you can use HDD Regenerator tool.
download the free trial here http://bit.ly/1jNIqbS