Help my Macbook hard disc seems to have disappeared

I have a Macbook (white, previous model to current version available) running Leopard OS and it seems to have lost the hard disc.

I was watching a video in vlc when it froze - I shut down by holding down the power button and restarted, but instead of showing the Apple logo, instead I get a folder with a question mark on it.

I've tried booting up with the OSX disc, which gets me to the Installer, but when I go to Disc Utility, it only shows the disc drive with OSX in it. If I try to reinstall OSX (which I'm hoping not to have to do yet), it has no options as to 'install destination' - my hard disc seems to have gone...

Ideally, I would be able to recover the contents of my hard disc, or at least My Documents, but I'd really appreciate any advice anyone could give.

Apologies for the lack of system spec - my Mac's been so easy 'till now, I've stupidly never made a note of them.

Thanks,

Jamie.

hay,
i'm not a professional user of mac. but i'll try to give you a little help. try this and see what you can have.

Re-start the mac and hold down the button next to the restart button. in a moment you will see a terminal window and it'll ask you to type
Shut down or to type mac boot.
just type mac boot and press enter.
If it boots up your computer, go to system preferences and select mac osx from there.
most probably you will be able to boot your computer. if it's fail, i think you have to re install your OS. If u just want to backup your things, if you are sure your hard disk is working, try to find out external hard disk connector and connect your hard drive via that to another Mac. it'll help you to backup your data.

hope these things will help you.
cheers