Disk utility can't find iMac hard drive

I had to power off my iMac by Pressing the power key and holding it several times over the last few weeks. The last time it wouldn't reboot - I'd just get an apple icon. When I tried a safe boot I'd get the icon and it would change to a no entry sign.
Next I started up from the snow leopard installation disk with the intent of repairing the iMac disk. The installation disk worked but when I opened disk utility it only found the installation disk. It didn't find the iMac disk.
Do I need to make a trip to the Apple store or is there something else to try?

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Oh Gosh, I am having this same problem too. I normally do not shut down ever, I reboot often because I have to due to bad wireless reception. Last month, I did a full shut down and unplug due to a terrible storm coming in. When I went to boot up, it took very long and I had booted from my external bootable drive. My saving grace is that since crashing my emac in 2006, I am a rabid "backerupper" (made up my own word). I have been using lacie’s Silverkeeper to make bootable back ups just in case. So When I tried disk utility, it did not see my drive. I used my third party software "Disk Warrior" by Alsoft, it saw my drive, and then I unplugged my external and then booted again from the Snow Leopard DVD and was able to repair. All was well until this weekend. We had a storm come trough quickly and we lost power, now I have the same problem you do but this time Disk Warrior does not see the disk either. I am going to dig around for a while before I hit the Genius bar. I fear the drive is fried. And for me I am not certain this will be worth the dollar amount to replace since this is a 2006 and not upgradeable, but I will check with an outside vendor for price for the drive so I know what I want to do if in fact the Genius bar cannot see the drive either. I do hope you have a back up version, and would suggest having third party software to take a chance to see if you can find your disk. My imac is an Intel duo core 2 GHZ and from what I can tell model number A1174. To get help from the smart people here it would be useful for you to post the rest of your specs. If you don't know the exact model, you can check everymac.com and plug in your serial number. Under the computer stand you will find the serial number and the emc number and you can find out from everymac.com what exact model you have. If I find anything I will come back to this thread and report in. Good luck to you.

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