How to recover data from dead Mac notebook drive

A good buddy of mine lost his Macbook drive. He took it in the Apple store and they said they couldn't get anything off of it. I am a PC user with a good amount of tech experience. I hooked it up to a USB adapter and it spins up, and I think I even heard the USB Found Device sound. Nothing showed up. Haven't done any data restoration as far as using any specific software, etc. I am open to any advice or pertinent links. Don't know if a Mac OS would let me pull files off if I was looking at it in Windows.

Disk Warrior might work. It's an app for recovering lost data. Google it and see if it fits your situation.