Hard drive vanished?

Last night, the family iMac (17") was asleep (or faking it) when I went to bed. This morning, I got up and found that its fan was running like a jet plane trying to take off, with the screen dark and the glowing spot turned on at a constant (not fluctuating). I forced it to shut down, since it was unresponsive. This afternoon, when we tried to start it up, we got a flashing question mark in a folder icon.
I pulled out the install disk and booted from it, intending to start by repairing the drive... and imagine my surprise when I found that no hard drive showed up in Disk Utility! I ran Apple Hardware Test (extended test), and everything passed. I rebooted again and tried Disk Utility again, but still no hard drive. I went into the installer... and nothing showed up on which to install.
So, seems like the hard drive must have died. I'd prefer to service it myself, rather than trucking it 45 minutes to an Apple Store and paying someone to figure out what's wrong and fix it, but I'm reluctant to go buy a new drive and install it if the problem could be elsewhere. Could this be anything other than a dead hard drive? Might TechTool (which I don't actually own, never having needed it) be able to find the drive if DU can't? And why would AHT have given everything a pass?
Thanks in advance!

As Miriam accurately pointed out, if Disk Utility can't even see the drive then you need to start with a new drive. TechTool would be useless since the drive is not functioning.
I figured as much, but you never know...
AHT is a very basic utility and it doesn't do much except simply look to detect that a hard drive is physically attached.
That's what I thought. Although, you would think that, if no hard drive whatsoever was detected, AHT would be smart enough to flag this as a problem!
My primary reason for asking these questions is just to try to figure out what the chances are that it's not the hard drive, but some other hardware sitting between the hard drive and the rest of the computer that got fried. My wife, who is adamantly PC and is thoroughly enjoying this opportunity to taunt me about my Macs (only fair since I teased her when her PC had to get its motherboard replaced), would not be pleased if I bought a new hard drive and then ended up having to send the machine to the shop anyway when that didn't fix the problem. Would AHT have spotted such a problem? Is there any other way I can test for such a condition?
Do you have a backup drive that you can try booting from?
Unfortunately, no. That machine was never backed up, since it was mainly used for kids' games and "disposable" school reports. All my external drives are currently tied up in backups of my machine.

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I've seen this complaint all over the web, but I've seen no helpful solutions from Apple or anyone else. Here's what happened to me.
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After updating my OS to 10.4.9 and restarting the computer, my LaCie 500 gigabyte USB drive's icons vanished from my desktop. I tried ALL of the recommended fixes, including dropping $100.00 on Diskwarrior. Nothing worked.
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I'm going to call Applecare ths afternoon and report the problem. Good luck, all.
- Brainclaw

Thanks for replying!
I spoke to Applecare last week; two different people. The first one was a frontline tech support person who claimed to know nothing about these problems. I was then referred to a higher-up person who said he HAD heard about these problems, but was very non-committal about it. I have his number and was told to call back after this Thursday (03-29-07) to check up on it.
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It sounds like you are building up excessive temporary files. What apps are you running? Have you installed apps lately? You should always keep at least 15% of your drive empty at all times.
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My operating system has just vanished !! The laptop turns on but dose not go past the apple logo and I really need my files from my hard drive ASAP ??

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Try booting in Safe Mode.
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Thanks, Terence.
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Hard Drive icon won't open and menu bar flashes off and on

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After iPhoto upgrade i can no longer access the photos stored on my external hard drive, after iPhoto upgrade i can no longer access the photos stored on my external hard drive

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What format is the external drive?

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Your problem is with the ED, then, isn't it?
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See this article
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5168
for more. Note also the comment:
“Additionally, storing the iPhoto library on a network rather than locally on your computer can also lead to poor performance or data loss.”

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Hard drive failed or did it??

I have a 10g that is almost 2 years old. This is the second time my music vanished. The first time was about 4 months ago. I took it in to the store and they updated it and everything was fine. The second time, this Monday, I took it into the store, they told me it was "clicking" and with the music having disappeared that meant the hard drive was gone (it has always clicked). I'm skeptical. Both times, the available space and capacity were not the same and the accessories were there. I have the 2.3 version my Itunes is 6.0.4. I have reset, retried, and restarted. Each time I tried to restore the buttons aren't active and my pc freezes up. I have my original disk, but am hesitant to try it. I also tried the reinstall and my pc doesn't acknowledge my Ipod. That happened last time, though. The woman at the genius bar said my only options were to trade in and get a new one, try a non Apple repair place since I am not under warranty, or this discussion site. I apologize for being so long winded about this, but I wanted to give you all the info in the hopes you could advise me...

Yes to all.
I thought you might have. Rats.
Did I do something wrong?
Hmm. I don't think so. I know that it seems to take forever when I do this, I usually just hold the buttons down until the iPod goes to something else (main menu, folder icon, sad iPod - the last two when I'm trying to help someone fix the thing).
If it tells me anything, it's that the hold button is in the "on" position. Double check that there isn't any orange showing, and flip it back and forth just to be sure. Again, I'm sure that's something you've likely already done.
As the thing seems a bit wonky anyhow, it wouldn't hurt to try the original CD and see if an older iPod updater can shake the thing loose long enough to test the drive.
If you are not keen on shelling out for a new iPod (I don't like them as much as the 3G), and want to have a pro look at your iPod, a company with many great recommendations is iPodResQ (with whom I have no affiliation except as a customer and from whom I recieve no compensation). They have a $30 overnight diagnostic service. He'll open it up, check the parts, and tell you what needs to be fixed and what your options are. If the drive is on the way out, he can replace it while it's open.

Hard drive vanished?

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