Is my 2007 mac mini done for?

My parents have a 2007 mac mini that is getting the folder and question mark, and I've tried to open startup manager but no volumes appear.
Is it safe to say the HDD inside of it dead?

Do they have a backup...?
If you have the Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD that was used to upgrade the Mini to 10.6, pop in the DVD and startup from it. Then navigate to Utilities > Disk Utility to see if you can find and make repairs to the startup volume. If you can not repair the startup volume and do not have a backup, check to see if you can copy the hard disc image to an external hard drive, then try erasing and reinstalling OS X. 
If you only have the original Tiger disc set, pop in disc 1 and navigate to Utilities > Disk Utility. At this point you will not be able to repair the Snow Leopard startup volume with the Tiger Disk Utility, but if you can see the volume you might be able to copy it to an external hard drive before erasing and reinstalling OS X 10.4.. 

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    Message was edited by: papalozarou

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