Help with imac symptoms

[wayne93117]

I have a 24" imac, 2.4, 4gb ram 320hd. Been having some problems and need some help in figuring out what to try next.

Symptoms:
Tasks like unraring, unzipping, and adding stuff to itunes are causing the computer to beachball.
Too many programs open, beachball.
Even at times it will beachball when safari has too many tabs open.
These often lead me to havingt ot leave the computer for 10-15 minutes to return back to normal, or the imac just completely locks up and needs to be hard reset.

What i have tried thus far:
Disk utlity to repair volume came back and said that the hd was too damaged to repair and needed a reinstall.
Upon trying to do an archive install, failed 3 times mid install.
Completely wiped the drive and reinstalled ok.

Where I'm at:
After moving some files back from a time machine version, the machine is still experiencing all the same problems (above).

Is this a drive problem? ram problem? or something else? Is there anything else that I can try on my own to diagnose?

Please help, thanks!

[Badger^2]

How full is your drive?

[wayne93117]

Originally Posted by Badger^2

How full is your drive?

40% full.