Flashing Question Mark - iMac sometimes won't boot

Hi
I have an aluminium cased iMac (2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) running OS 10.6.8.
Recently I have found that sometimes the machine will not boot - I get the normal chime, grey screen and then the flashing question mark icon. I first noticed the problem a few months ago when restarting after a power outage had occured whilst I was using the Mac. After a couple of tries the machine booted and so I thought little more about it because in usual circumstances when the machine was shut down correctly it started as normal and behaved perfectly. However, after another power outage over the weekend the problem has become much worse.
I have tried all the usual things like trying to boot up in safe mode and recovery mode but with no success. The only way I can get the Mac to boot at all is to simply keep powering down and powering up again and hoping that it will spring into life. Once it does boot the Mac behaves perfectly.
I have an 10.6.8 universal system disk and I got the machine to boot from this disk. I then tried to perform some diagnostics on the hard drive (320Gb) but when I got to the pane that shows the available drivesthere was no drive to be seen.
After a lot of tries I have got it to boot off the hard drive since so, thankfully, I have been able to back up files that weren't archived to an external drive.
Am I right in suspecting that the hard drive is near the end of ts life or should I be considering other scenarios?
Thanks in advance.

Thanks for your prompt reply.
I have gone through all the suggestions on the link but with no success. If I boot off the 10.6.8 universal system disk - which is the one I used for installation of the system - it cannot find a hard drive on which to perform a check, format or do a clean installation. Everything in the pane is greyed.
This makes me suspect the drive - this is a six year old machine. It came secondhand to me but looked as new and has been perfect for a couple of years so It doesn't appear to have had a hard life.
I have eventually got it going again by simply turning off and turning on periodically in between going about doing other chores. After the last attempt pressing of the start button I walked off to do something else and when I came back it had booted. I am using the machine to write this reply.

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Flashing Question Mark - iMac sometimes won't boot

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