Not able to reinstall OSX Snow Leopard - broken hard drive?

Hi!
So I have the following problem, that I would like to have some help with.
Until recently my iMac (early 2008, 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 gb ram, 24") has been running with OSX and Windows 7 in bootcamp. All of the sudden, I was not able to boot OSX; when trying to do this the computer stalls on a grey screen with a loading bar in the bottom (like this http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10387698-263.html). I decided to reinstall OSX, but it was not possible. Everytime I tried to select the hard drive during installation the computer instantly goes into grey screen.
Being pretty stuck here, I then continued to formatting and reinstalling Windows 7. I have now been running RAM test and there are not visible problems. Also I am still not able to reinstall OSX even after a format. It leads me to think that the hard drive may be close to dying.
Does anyone have some similar experiences? Opinions?
Best regards, Mikkel

So, I decided to run some diagnostics:
I am not sure that I decipher the numbers correctly, but the four pre-failures on top seems threatening. Am I right?

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A. Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions:
Boot from your current OS X Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. Then 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. Now restart normally.
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Check the box labeled Erase destination.
Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it to the Destination entry field.
Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to the Source entry field.
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C. Important: Please read before installing:
If you have a FireWire hard drive connected, disconnect it before installing the update unless you will boot from this drive and install the update on it. Reconnect it and turn it back on after installation is complete and you've restarted.
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