Hard Drive Where?

Hi
Turned on my mac on Saturday and waited an extended period in the boot up to find a little icon of a question mark flashing on a folder. I assumed that this mean that my hard drive is lost somewhere.
I inserted the restore CD's (not the originals as I bought my machine 2nd hand. My restore CD's are for G5 it turns out but seem to kind of work.) and managed to start the re0install process.
I got as far as 3 stages or so into re-install 10.3 from the restore CD. The problem is that when it looks for a source to install panther onto, my hard drive does not appear as an option. In fact the only place I can try to install is on the CD. Not a solution.
I guess my problem is that my Hard drive is no longer recognised, possibly becuase it has died. Is this recoverable from home? What's the likely outcome? I'm guessing prognosis not good.
I'm hoping the above makes sense.
Cheers

Hi Alan:
If the hard drive is greyed out and cannot be selected as a destination for the install, it's because the restore disks you have are not compatible with your iMac; if the hard drive does not appear at all, then the hard drive is at fault. It probably isn't dead, but it is sick: the directories are so messed up that the drive simply doesn't register anymore, in which case reformatting, as Kappy directs, would resolve the problem. You'll lose everything on the drive, but you'll be able to reinstall.
If you have data on the drive you'd like to recover, there are a couple of things to check first:
1. Boot from your restore CD;
2. When you get to the first screen (language selection), go to the Utilities menu and launch Disk Utility;
3. If Disk Utility sees the hard drive, try repairing the disk and then repairing the permissions;
4. Quit Disk Utility, then go to the Utilities menu and use the Startup Disk utility to reset your hard drive as the startup disk;
If Disk Utility does not see the hard drive, you could try a third-party utility, such as Disk Warrior or TechTool Pro; either one might repair the disk in situations where Disk Utility can't.
Good luck!
Andrew Penner

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