Won't boot from HDD. Please help.

Hi.

Starting last evening, I have been unable to make my G4 Powerbook with Tiger boot past the screen with the apple.

I used the Tiger install DVD to repair the disk. It found problems, but thinks it fixed them.

It still won't boot from the HDD.

I think what I want to do is copy a few important files to an external HDD and then reinstall the OS, but I can't seem to do that through the disk utility, unless there's a way I don't know. It will let me look inside the internal, but that isn't helpful if I can't move anything elsewhere.

Any suggestions?

 

I can make a disk image as you describe, but the external drives appear grey in the side bar and I don't know of a way to save to them. I can save the image to the main drive (which is why I don't think it's dead), but that won't do me any good if I then reformat it. Or will it? Will everything on the physical drive get replaced or just the image with the OS on it?

 

No more ideas?