Disc Repair did not help

After I shut down my imac for giving me the spinning beachball of death for a few minutes it would not reboot. I was working in Adobe After Effects when this happened. After the restart It became stuck on the white screen with the spinning wheel under the mac apple (not the beach ball). This is usually the screen I see on startup although it didn't go any further this time. I inserted the operating system disc, booted from it and did a disc repair. It told me the disc could not be repaired. My question..is that all I can do??? The disc repair window prompted me to erase my disc, but of course, I will lose all my programs which I do not want to do. Is their another option to help me boot this imac up without erasing my disc and starting from scratch???..if that will repair the disc at all?? and that is also a concern. Will erasing or reformatting the disc fix a bad disc? Please help!

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Yes that is it. A program such as DiskWarrior MIGHT ave the drive, but at $99 put it towards a new drive. And of course you do have everything backed up to an external drive .. don't you?