Hard drive not recognized on startup after 10.4.6 update

This is hurting my brain.
I updated to 10.4.6 from the Software Update that popped up today. Upon restart it "froze" on the greyscreen with the Apple logo. (didn't make it to the spinning wheel). I even let it sit for a good 10 minutes, hoping it would snap out of it
Booted with install DVD (10.4.3) and ran First Aid. Here it see's the drive and found no problems, also ran repair permissions, which found a few on a HP printer driver installed ages ago. Now when I restart it just gives me the friggin flashing folder with a questions mark/finder icon.
Running disk warrior found a few things to repair, but still the same flashing folder with question mark
Next I popped in a backup hd with 10.4.5 on it, it loads up and sees the main hd. Huh?
So i backed up the important stuff and did an archive and install on the main hd. But still get the flashing folder w/question mark. GAH.
I rather not reformat as my backup hd is only 30 GB free and I have 80GB of data i need on the main hd!
Help?!

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that I tried that too when I was able to boot up with my backup HD. Actually I tried it again just for kicks. And now I get the the spinning wheel with the apple logo and does that for a good 5 minutes, then the apple logo changes to the circle with a slash.
At least I can stil see the drive when I boot up the backup hd. I suppose I'll just backup the files to dvd hmm 50gb divided by 4.7... 11 discs...

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