Mac Pro, wont boot up, any ideas??

Mac pro 8 core - osx 10.6.something (the latest snow leapord)
SSD drive.
16gb ram.


recently loaded pro tools onto it to edit a project im doing.
the other day i went to turn the computer on and it shut down when it got to the grey screen.
after days of trying a couple of different things.
the furthest I can get is holding down the power button, holding down the eject button and inserting the latest firmware on a disk.

it has a progress bar pop up twice then the loading sign comes up, then as the disk sounds like its about to load it shuts down.

Also tried the OSX disk to get to disk utility.
it says unable to repair disk in red, and that I need to back up everything.

Any help to get my system up and running, if only for a couple of days would be great.
I need to do some work before wednesday when Im back in the studio.
theres also work Ive done which I really dont want to lose.

I dont have time machine setup (YET)

I think system files are corrupted. SSD is a flash storage shouldn't be damage like rotating drive but shutting down while loading OS may cause file system damage

Do you have another Mac or PC with macdrive installed?

If you have connect your mac pro to another computer and use Target disk mode to back up your sessions and important files 'coz you may have to reformat your start up drive.

Mac pro shutting down by itself? Ummm It sounds like Power Supply's problem. Ask your local Apple provider.

Hope you'll get your files back Good Luck

it was taking forever to load the other day when I forced it to shut down, so this may have whats happened.

I have a g-tech hardrive that I can use to back everything up, most of which is backed up already,
the work ive done in the last week or so isnt backed up, which is what I need.

So is there no way of loading osx from the disk without wiping everything else thats on there
i.e. pro tools, logic, software synths etc etc....
?

you can try boot in safe mode. go to this page to see how
Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode

Mac can boot from external hard drive too. if you have free spare External HD (beside getech) you can install OS X and use it as start up disk after OS X installed.

if you can boot OS X you can try to use 3rd party Disk Utility such as Drive Genius, Disk warrior and etc... to repair your old start up disk

already tried booting in safe mode too.
didnt work

installing osx onto a different internal drive now.

The only external I have is the backup drive, with all the samples, audio etc..
except I didnt back up the latest pro tools files in the last week or so

Someone has said about not using an SSD as the main drive as they are not proven in music production yet?

any thoughts?

after you install OS X to another internal drive you can use "Migration Assistant" to restore your apps

SSD is fine to use as main drive.

Some Audio apps and Software Instrument have to be install onto system drive. (Such as Logic Studio 60GB, Omnisphere 45GB, Trilian 45GB and etc...) So for music production you're going to need quite a lot of disk space and large SSD Drive is quite expensive. That's why I don't recommend SSD to someone on a budget.

But You already have it. that's not going to be problem it's ok to use as main drive.

The SSD is under warranty, so as long as I can migrate everything, which im about to try, its not the end of the world



currently clearing the other internal hardrive to migrate everything over

If this runs better I will leave it as it is, but im sure it wont run as fast as the SSD

Any advice on how to configure everything when I get the SSD back (new one hopefully)

I think it's only operating system corrupted not physical damaged. This can happen to every kind of storage. Unlike normal HDD rotating drive, SSDs are very hard to get physical damage for normal use because it's flash based storage but electric shock can damage chips in it.

If SSD's seriously damage (Such as S.M.A.R.T. Status is fail to verify, Unable to repartition or erase) get a new replacement but if not that bad just reinitialize or erase it

Boot disc has diagnosed it for you. Time for a new hard drive. You might like to consider DiskWarrior but at $99 may well be best to put that towards a new drive. Best way to set up new SSD is a clean system install and then use Migration Assistant to transfer everything over.