IMac won't start without a lot of coaxing

Hi,
I have an iMac that's a little over a year old (Oct. 2010) and it's acting bizarrely.
The other day the finder crashed and I had to restart. When I restarted, it went from the grey startup screen to the blue screen, then sat indefinitely on the blue screen. It wouldn't move past the blue screen, no matter how many times I tried. I put it into target disk mode and did a disk utility scan on it from another computer. Errors were found, and it turned on with no issues.
It's now the day after this happened and this problem is happening again. It is also refusing to start up while connected to any external drives. Help! I want a computer that functions normally.
Intel iMac
Software version: 10.6.8
Processor: 3.2 GHz Intel Core i3

Disconnect all peripherals except your keyboard and mouse. Do the following:
Reinstall OS X without erasing the drive
Do the following:
1. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list.  In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive.  If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior and/or Tech Tool Pro to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.
2. Reinstall Snow Leopard
If the drive is OK then quit DU and return to the installer.  Proceed with reinstalling OS X.  Note that the Snow Leopard installer will not erase your drive or disturb your files.  After installing a fresh copy of OS X the installer will move your Home folder, third-party applications, support items, and network preferences into the newly installed system.
Download and install the Combo Updater for the version you prefer from support.apple.com/downloads/.

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