Is my iMac unfixable (without sending it to apple)

[thefireboy]

Hello, this whole thing started this morning when every few minutes my 20" iMac 2.0ghz (the first gen aluminium one, which is fifth gen iMac I think) froze the volleyball/ colour circle came up and after 40 seconds or so it worked again. So I read I should try and verify my disk, so I did and that came up with 'Jake's HDD is corrupt, you need to repair the disk) so I backed it up and put the snow leopard disk in (I'm up to date with the software updates). Then disk utility (booted from the disk) said the repair didn't work and I need to restore and then re-install snow leopard. I did this and it fully booted up once but then it went to display sleep and it didn't turn back on. So I turned it off when I turned it back on it stayed on the apple logo gray screen with the spinning thing so I turned it off again and booted the disk. I tried to re-verifyv the disk but that said I needed to restore again so I did and it didn't change anything. Apart from the apple logo eventually changed to a circle with a diagonal line running from left high to right low like a no entry road sign. Just ran disk utility again and it's the same as before.
What can I do?
Cheers
Jake

 

[Hellhammer]

You can check my guide but you've done most of it already. I would replace the HD because it sounds like the HD is dying. HDs don't cost much so if you're able to do it yourself, you're fine with 50$

 

[thefireboy]

Your guide is what I used! In disk utility off the disk, I just tried to verify and that said i need to repair and reapir said I need to restore and the restore buttons are unclickable (grayed out) and the hard drive it saying unmounted and it's nit doing anything when I try and mount it.

 

[Hellhammer]

Your guide is what I used! In disk utility off the disk, I just tried to verify and that said i need to repair and reapir said I need to restore and the restore buttons are unclickable (grayed out) and the hard drive it saying unmounted and it's nit doing anything when I try and mount it.

Oh, didn't know (first one who found it without me linking it, wohoo!). Sounds like your HD is busted so as I said, buy a new one and replace it yourself (follow a tutorial in Youtube for example, not very hard) or pay 3x the price for Apple to replace it with a HD you can't choose or if you have warranty left, just call Apple and they'll replace it for free.

 

[thefireboy]

Ahh okay, could be worse at least it's not the logic board! This is the 1st thing that's gone wrong in 2 and a half years!