HELP! Booting up problems... need suggestions, a pat on the back...

I've had no problems with my 7 year old 700 mHz eMac until this morning. I was letting it run and download some updates from Software Update overnight. When I got up this morning, I remembered that I had let it run all night long. It was stuck on the iTunes update, which I had needed to quit before it continued. I did and sent it on its merry way which it began to do with the rest of the updates. At some point in the next half hour, the mouse got moved and the widgets got stuck and frozen as it was still downloading. Frozen, I couldn't force quit anything, so I turned off the power (probably the big mistake right there...). It hasn't been able to re-boot past the gray screen, then the white screen with the apple, since. It sits at that screen and instead of running the little spinning circle like it usually does while booting I get nothing for hours. I tried zapping the PRAM, nothing changes. I cannot go into single user or verbose modes. I re-booted from the Install CD and ran Disk Utility. It verifies that the HD needs to be repaired and that "Keys are out of order..." I hit repair and it says that it is re-building the catalogue B tree and then says that Repairs are completed, but the HD is still unmounted. Is there any way to force it to mount? I'm thinking about picking up a copy of Disk Warrior tomorrow and crossing my fingers. I have LOTS of stuff that I have wanted to backup on an external hard drive that I haven't been able to afford. Any suggestions?