My hard disk has mechanical issues, is it possible to recover any of the information?

My iMac is a year and a half old, one day I turned it on and it wouldn't load, I mean, it stayed on the white screen with the apple. I tried everything, nothing happened so I took it for maintenance. They checked it and said the hard disk has mechanical issues, is it possible to save any of the information?
How come, using it such for such a short period of time, the hard disk is already damaged?

Apple isn't known to use the highest quality hard drives. The Seagate in my mid-2011 iMac gets a 2 year warranty when sold on it's own, which in a world of 3-5 year warranties, isn't inspiring.  I got Applecare for that reason.
Your year and a half old iMac has one of the hard drives that either needs to be replaced by Apple (which may be a refurbished drive, if that matters to you) or you can send your iMac to OWC (macsales.com) and have them install a drive. Apple now uses a proprietary connector which has a sensor included on the drive. OWC has a service where they'll work magic to install the drive of your choice with added sensor, so the system works. If you were to install a regular hard drive yourself, the system thinks the hard drive is overheating and runs the fan on full.

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