Computer wont recognize startup disk..

My I mac just started getting wonky. On Re-start, it would not recognize start up disk. Re started using Install disk, went to disk utilities to run repair and the hard drive was not even listed in the menu. Looked ar re-installing sysrem, but no hard drive was available to install to. After a few more attempts, hard drive became available, ran disk repair, said everything was fine, repaired permisions, selected my startup disk and restarted.. Nothing. Blinking folder. Tried restart again, this time got spinning wheel on grey mac screen.. Computer seemes to be hot.
Left it over night and it started up fine in the morning. Any help would be appreciated. Should I re-install system? Or has my drive gone bad?
thanks

Reinstalling the operating system does not look like the answer, more likely a hardware fault. If you have important material on the hard drive, this would be an excellent time to get an external drive and backup the material. Even better, use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, both free downloads, to make a bootable clone of the system on the external drive. Then you could start from that drive if the internal drive is failing.
Have you run the hardware diagnostic tests? That might not be a bad idea...see if anything is identified as going bad.

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