Possible Hard Drive Failure - Please Help

Hello everyone.
I have a 24" Aluminum iMac (Mid 2007 model, I believe) that was purchased around November 2007. The internal hard drive is 500 GB (roughly 300 GB for OS X and 200 GB for Windows XP). My problem is that my iMac doesn't want to boot into OS X. Please note that I can still access my Windows XP partition by holding the option when the computer starts up.
Here's a list of the things I've tried so far:
-Calling the support number: The gentleman took me through some basic trouble shooting steps (including booting in Single User Mode and typing the fsck command) but couldn't resolve the issue, so he gave me a case number and made an appointment at a local Apple store which I could not attend. I have yet to reschedule another appointment.
-Booted the "sick" Mac in Target Disk Mode while connecting it to another "savior" Mac via FireWire: Nothing. The target Mac goes into TDM correctly (FireWire logo bounces around screen), but the savior Mac did not recognize it. (The drive didn't mount?) This was the case with two different savior Macs.
-Booted in Verbose Mode: I held down Command+V while booting the computer. The trouble seems to arise directly after the line "AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement: Intialization complete". The next step results in an error reading "disk0s2: I/O error.", then the computer shuts down after about 45 seconds.
-Inserted "Mac OS X Install Disc 1": I held down option and selected to boot from the CD. I chose English as the main language. When the welcome screen pops up (to re-install Leopard), I instead chose to run the Disk Utility option from the menu bar. I see my hard drive (465.8 GB) which is split into two partitions ("Macintosh HD" which I assume is disk0s2, and "disk0s3" which I assume is my Windows XP partition). I attempt to verify disk permissions on "Macintosh HD" but it almost immediately bumps back with an error saying "First Aid failed. Disk Utility stopped verifying permissions on 'Macintosh HD' because the following error was encountered: The underlying task reported failure on exit." Next, I click on Verify Disk instead of Verify Disk Permissions. The errors in the details list (red colored text?) include "Incorrect number of thread counts", "Invalid node structure", "Volume check failed", and "Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed."
-Tried to make an image of my current disk onto an external HD connected through FireWire: I thought this looked bad, so I figured I could re-install Leopard entirely. However, I have years of data on this hard drive that are irreplaceable (my fault for not backing it up to begin with). I hooked up a brand new 1 TB external drive via FireWire800. In Disk Utility, I can see the 1 TB external alongside my 500 GB internal. I clicked on the "Macintosh HD" disk and clicked "New Image" and directed it to create an image of my internal drive on my external drive. I click Save. After about five seconds, it bounces back with an error reading "Unable to create 'Macintosh HD.dmg'. (Input/output error)".
Questions:
1. What the heck happened? Is the problem the result of a head crash? Is it a problem in the boot sector?
2. Is there any possible way to recover the data on the hard drive?
3. Does a failure like this get covered by Apple Care Protection Plans? (the computer is covered, by the way)
Thank you very very much in advance. Sorry for the huge amount of text. :-x
Message was edited by: UnderTheMud
Message was edited by: UnderTheMud

Buy Disk Warrior and use it to repair your OS X volume (if it's repairable.) If DW cannot repair the volume then use Disk Utility to reformat the volume using the Zero Data (one pass) Security option.
Do you have a backup of your OS X volume? Since you have tried using TDM to access the drive without success it's reasonable to assume your data may be lost. If you have an external hard drive you can use, then you could attempt to use file recovery software to see if your data are recoverable.
At this point it is premature to assume the drive is bad since your Windows volume is functional. If you have Windows software for reading Mac drives you may try accessing the OS X volume from Windows.
Basics of File Recovery
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten with recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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