Yes, a Mac Hard drive can become dead and if such a case happens have you ever thought of, what will happen to the data there on the hard drive. I faced such an issue and tried to find out the solution to the problem what I found out was that the data solution to the problem is really easy. The is recoverable even if the Mac Hard Drive becomes dead.
Mac Hard drive becomes dead when the it's own operating system no longer integrates with the OS X Operating system which is driving the computer. There is a built in Mac utility to help you recover the data, what you require is another Mac for it.
The procedure to recover that data from a dead Mac Hard drive is known as "Target Mode”, What is required is both the Mac computer should have a Firewire port, and a firewall cable is also required.
Now as we have all the essentials for the data recovery process lets start the recovery process.
Keep both the Mac, one with the dead hard drive and other Mac beside. Remove all the cables from the Mac that has the dead hard drive.
Now reattach all the cables to the dead hard drive Mac and plug in the system.
Now turn on the second Mac, wait for the desktop to appear, Take the firewall cable and connect the cable to each of the Mac's firewire input.
Now you need to turn on the Mac that has the dead hard drive, what you need to take care while turning it on is that you hold the “T” key, and keep it holding.
You only need to release the “T” key when you see a dead hard drive icon on the second Mac.
Now as you see the icon on of the dead hard drive on the second Mac you need to double click the icon to open it's window. Now drag all the data you can see in the window to the desktop, this may take minutes to hours depending on your data on the drive.
Once the data is being copied move the dead hard drive icon to trash, now press the power button of the Mac that has the dead hard drive till the time you are sure that the system has shut down.
Now disconnect all the cables from both the Mac PC and rearrange all the cables you will see that the data has been recovered.
So as I told that the data recovery process is really easy after a hard drive is dead on Mac. But, if in case you don't have a second Mac or if in case the things didn't go as per the plan then, will the data be still recoverable?
Yes, why not, in such a case Mac data recovery software can come to the rescue, just make sure that you go for a mac recovery software that has the option of a BOOT CD. You will just then need to start the PC and insert the data recovery BOOT CD to the system and the rest will be done by the software.
