Macbook Leopard Update- Hard drive not recognized?!?!

Question- What do you think caused this problem, and how can I best fix it?
(See below for information)
Well, I finally decided to update to Leopard. I put the disk in my Macbook, and everything went smoothly as it verified the installation DVD- until the end of the verification, that is. A message screen would pop up telling me the disk was dirty. "Okay," I thought,"No problem." I was a bit puzzled, though, because the installation with the same Family Pack disk went fine on my father's Mac. I cleaned the disk, and tried again. And again. Each time, I was greeted with the same message at the end of the verification. Frustrated, I took the disk and my laptop to Best Buy, hoping someone could help me there. We ran the installation again... to no surprise, the same problem occurs. This time, though, when we quit the installer and try to reboot, after the gray screen with the apple at the beginning, we are greeted with a black screen with one command line. NOT GOOD! We rebooted the computer again, this time starting up with a disk to check the permissions and hard drive. The diagnosis: The permissions on my Mac are screwed up, so it's not recognizing the hard drive. The Best Buy guy claims the permissions have been messed up since I bought the Mac, and everything will be just fine and dandy after I transfer the data to another computer, install the Tiger disk that my Macbook came with, update to Leopard, then transfer the data back to my Mac. I'm taking my Mac to the closest Apple store (about 2 hours away) for advice from the pros on Saturday. Until then, I'm hesitant to even turn the thing on, out of fear it will spontaneously erase the data or something to that extent.
Question: (in case you forgot)What do you think caused this problem, and how can I best fix it?

Unplugging worked!!!
I have no idea what PRAM is but someone said that unplugging your computer resets it so, I thought I'd give unplugging a shot. So, I shut down my computer and unplugged it. I also unplugged the power on the HD. (because I wasn't sure which one they were talking about.)
Anyway, I went away for about five minutes.
I came back plugged in the HD power first. Then, I plugged in the power cord for the computer and turned it on.
As soon as I logged in I was asked if I wanted to use my external HD for Time Machine backups.
I saw the icon for the HD on the Desktop where is belongs. I can open the drive and access the files with no problem.
Try this if you haven't yet.

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