Q: Can't start mac in recovery mode

My 2009 iMac running on the lovely OS X Yosemite stopped recognizing my usb attached keyboard and trackpad, so I had to do a forced restart. When I did so, I got the gray screen with an apple progress bar that would stop at about 40% through the startup process. Sometimes it would just stop at the 40% and other times my computer would turn off at that point. I restarted in recovery mode and ran the disc utility. The system told me to repair the disk, but I kept on receiving the error "file system check - exit code 8 cannot repair disk." I ran it a few times and received the same message. I then restarted the computer in single user mode and ran fsck -fy. I got the same message with that. I then logged back into recovery mode and tried to restore from backup. Every time I attempted to do so, the restore would get to 77% and then stop. I tried this with about  3 different backup dates and had the same results (my system never ran well on Yosemite, so I'm not that surprised). I then decided to erase the disk and reinstall Yosemite. This would fail for various reasons. Sometimes, the system would freeze up. Sometimes, nothing happened. Some forums said that the progress bar was a fake out and to just let the system run, but I'd let it run for over a day and it would still stay in the same spot. Once, the install showed as complete but then the system never restarted, even after 10 hours. Once the system did restart after installing, but it booted to recovery mode. I tried to restore a backup at this point, but still the 77% thing. Since it almost worked this time, I erased the disk and reinstalled OS X one more time. The system froze up with the spinning wheel. I waited 3 days, still not loading the install, so I forced restarted. Now, I get the blinking question mark folder when I restart and the computer does not respond to command-r or command-s. I managed to find my Snow Leopard install disk, but when I attempt to install that, no disk image shows up when it gets to the step where it asks for a destination disk. I run disk utility, and the only disk option that shows up is the CD.

Is there anything I can do to fix this? I'm guessing it needs a new hard drive but I know that well surpasses my abilities as an amateur techie. Obviously, I have been avoiding going to Apple. I only use this computer to watch TV and DVDs (it is my sole DVD player). I'm not really that interested in sinking a ton of dough into fixing it. However, my time machine is being fun and not letting me access the iMac disk from my macbook air. I'd like to restore the computer to figure this out as I'm not really interested in losing all of that info. Can anyone offer any advice? Or maybe an estimate at how much Apple will charge to fix it so I can at least prepare myself?