Yes, to both questions. Take out the old drive and put it into an external USB enclosure for SATA laptop drives, and in all likelihood you'll be able to recover the data.
And obviously, you can buy any standard SATA laptop drive to replace it. Then you'll need to reinstall the operating system, instructions here. If you did not receive an OS disc with your system, you can order replacement discs from this page.
I've had my laptop for three years. I started getting the dreaded black screen, repair your computer or start windows normally. It never did "repair" itself and then one morning I couldn't get it to start period.
Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic