Not sure what's going on with my macbook

Yesterday my MacBook completely froze up. All I could do was move the mouse around. I couldn't click anything or force quit. I had to hold down the power button to restart and when the computer tried to boot up it couldn't. It would stay at the apple logo with the spinner for awhile before trying to restart on its own.

At this point I looked online for some solutions. I tried booting in safe mode, no luck, I can boot from the install DVD and when I used disk utility on the HD I get something about a node error. This is where it gets really strange though.

I decided I should just reinstall the OS because I didn't have anything on my computer worth saving. I started the reinstall and everything seemed to be working until it randomly failed and told me to try again.

I've tried multiple times with no avail, and now when I go to boot holding the option key, booting from the HD isn't even an option.

What could be wrong? Is it something simple like my HD going bad? Or something worse? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Please excuse spelling errors this was posted from my iPhone

You need a new hard drive. The first error you received from Disk Utility about the node error was an indication. Reinstalling OS X almost never solves problems and is usually a waste of time.

Is your machine still under warranty or Apple care? If it is, contact Apple for service, if not, you can probably change the HD yourself. Did you by chance make a backup of your hard drive while it was OK?

Thanks for the quick reply.
My MacBook is unfortunately not under warranty but I think I should be able to install the drive myself. I did not have a backup (stupid of me) but I don't have any real valuable info that I couldn't live without.

Are there any steps I can take to assure it's the HD before I purchase a new one?

The symptoms you described and the Disk Utility error that came up all point to a defective hard drive. Of course knowing Murphy's law, it could be something else but everything so far indicates a bad hard drive.

Ok thanks a bunch. One last question, can you point me in the direction of a reliable new HD?

Sure. The folks at Other World Computing are Mac specialists and stock only the best equipment for your Mac. Here's the LINK. You can also buy a new hard drive locally at any Best Buy or other store which sells computer accessories and equipment. Just make sure the hard drive is SATA, 2.5" wide and no more than 9.5 mm thick.

Thanks for the link. That's where I bought my RAM from a couple years ago and I completely forgot about them.