iMac fails to boot - help!

[Dunkrag]

Help! I think my iMac has died!!!

Just not booting at all.
1. iMac chimes when I press the button.
2. Apple logo appears along with spinning icon + bar appears at bottom of screen which gets about 1/10th of the way along and then the whole thing just turns off again.

Can't even get it to run in safe mode.

Thought I would re-install Snow Leopard, so put the disc in and held down 'C' and brings up the install panel, however the hard disc is not available to select for a destination to install.

Next I run disk utility from here. I run Verify Disk on the HD and it says 'Invalid Node Structure' 'Could Not Be Verified'. 'This disc needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disc'.
I do this and after a minute during the 'updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.' process it says 'Can't repair disc. Back Up Files, reformat disk and restore backed up files'.

So - how do I back up from this position, (my last time machine backup is April 13th - I know I know, I'm an idiot!) as by telling me to back up files it would seem to indicate that it is possible.

Anyone offer any assistance?

It's a 20'' iMac, 2.4ghz, core 2 duo, 2G Ram, 500GB hard disc (about 45GB free). About 2 years old.

 

[alphaod]

If your HDD has failed the only way is to sent it off to a recovery facility. Apple certainly won't recover it. All they will do is replace the drive if you're still under warranty/AppleCare.

 

[Dunkrag]

Well, I decided to just erase and do a clean install of SL. Erased went fine but half way through the SL install it told me that it couldn't install it on the HDD.
Guess my hard drive has just failed.

Feels like I should just but new HD and restore from my April Time Machine back up.

Any suggestions on a decent replacement HD? 1TB would be good with a UK stockist.
Thanks.

 

[Hellhammer]

Well, I decided to just erase and do a clean install of SL. Erased went fine but half way through the SL install it told me that it couldn't install it on the HDD.
Guess my hard drive has just failed.

Feels like I should just but new HD and restore from my April Time Machine back up.

Any suggestions on a decent replacement HD? 1TB would be good with a UK stockist.
Thanks.

I like Western Digital's HDs. Caviar Blacks are very fast but little noisy so if you can live with it, then I's get it

 

[justperry]

Well, I decided to just erase and do a clean install of SL. Erased went fine but half way through the SL install it told me that it couldn't install it on the HDD.
Guess my hard drive has just failed.

Feels like I should just but new HD and restore from my April Time Machine back up.

Any suggestions on a decent replacement HD? 1TB would be good with a UK stockist.
Thanks.

Why didn't You first startup from your backup,if you did you could've saved yourself a lot of trouble.
Next time,startup from backup and then try to repair with diskwarrior,if you don't succeed you could try to recover if the disk is available.
A clean restart should always be your last resort.
Keeping a bootable backup always comes in handy when such things occur.
I Myself always have an identical system on a seperate partition AND an external bootable backup.
Things like this happen to everybody,some have it fast,others have no problems at all for years but it will happen one day.
So,yes,backup!!
Good luck