Grey screen of death

Erase the drive and reinstall Mavericks:

Install or Reinstall Mavericks, Mountain Lion, or Lion from Scratch

Be sure you backup your files to an external drive or second internal drive because the following procedure will remove everything from the hard drive.

OS X Mavericks- Erase and reinstall OS X

OS X Mountain Lion- Erase and reinstall OS X

OS X Lion- Erase and reinstall Mac OS X

Note: You will need an active Internet connection. I suggest using Ethernet if possible

because it is three times faster than wireless.

Not if you cannot boot the computer. Are you able to start from the Recovery HD?

Boot Using Command+R keys:

1. Restart the computer.

2. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the

"COMMAND" and the "R" keys together.

3. Release the keys when the Utilities Menu appears.

If this works, then you can try to clone your drive to an external drive properly formatted for OS X. Once you have the computer working, then you can connect the external drive and try to access your files.

1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue

button.

2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.

3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.

4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it

to the Destination entry field.

5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to

the Source entry field.

6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.

Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.

Any external drive will do that's large enough to hold all the data on your internal drive. Use Disk Utility from the Recovery HD to format the external drive - one GUID partition and use Mac OS Extended, Journaled format on the external drive. Disk Utility cannot be used to restore specific files. It can only do a full disk copy.

I think I have to take it to the genius bar

You're right. A negative hardware test doesn't mean anything. The internal hard drive has failed, or there is some other hardware fault.

if the internal hard drive has failed how am I still able to go through disk utilities and "choose image" to view the files?

A drive can, and usually does, fail without going completely dead.

if I do use disk utility and clone the drive will I be able to get back specific files from the clone

Yes.

try erase and reinstall

Even if you do manage to reinstall the OS, the drive still won't be trustworthy.

That's what I would do.

Yes.