Mac Mini won't boot after restore

[Bloodsmasher]

I have been trying to install Windows 7 on my Mac Mini recently, but due to various hard drive errors and failures I radically decided to Wipe my hard drive, completely erase it in the recovery disk utility and restore from a backup. When I tried to access the backup drive again, it started OS Lion's online recovery mode (takes about 1 1/2 hours to start). I then restored my hard drive and restarted my computer. Half an hour later it is STILL on the grey screen with an apple logo and spinning 'worm' and getting very hot. Rinse and repeat, but this time just install Lion. Did it again. Restarted, it worked but it was all strange, it was a mix of different backups from different times. Restore from backup AGAIN, same problem. What is going on?

 

[Bloodsmasher]

I've left my computer to start up all day now and it is now very overheated and still going nowhere fast.

 

[DoFoT9]

It's hard to troubleshoot over the Internet, but it sounds as though the hard drive is damaged, if it is still under warranty I would take it back to Apple for them to look at it.

 

[Bloodsmasher]

I did consider that, maybe I'll give them a call tomorrow. It'll be more difficult because there are no apple stores in my state and I'm a minor with no credit card, accessible bank account etc.

EDIT: I have verified and run a repair on my Hard drive numerous times and it says it is fine. The recovery drive works but the filesystems are damaged. I'll try to install OS Lion overnight again, it took ~10+ Hours yesterday and it at least got it to a bootable state.