Booting to safe mode? been stuck on boot screen for 2 hours? Help please

Hello, I had a problem with my Mac which I have posted previously right here, https://discussions.apple.com/message/22649979#22649979
The first reply I recieved told me to boot to safe mode, so i followed the instructions and my computer has been stuck on the white screen with the rotating loading boot thing for 2+ hours.
I have never booted to safe mode
I heard that booting to safe mode can sometimes take a while but surely not 2+ hours??
to be clear this is the screen I am talking about
I have no back ups of my computer [I know thats not smart], it is far out of warranty, I am a student that has many important documents on here and all my music and family photos. Please help. I go back to school very soon and need this computer in working order! thank you to any one that helps

If you want to preserve the data on the boot drive, you must try to back up now, before you do anything else. It may or may not be possible. Do not try to repair the volume if you have no backups. The result could be total, irrevocable data loss.
There are several ways to back up a Mac that is not fully functional. You need an external hard drive to hold the backup data.
1. Boot from the Recovery partition or from a local Time Machine backup volume (option key at startup.) Launch Disk Utility and follow the instructions in this support article, under “Instructions for backing up to an external hard disk via Disk Utility.”
2. If you have access to a working Mac, and both it and the non-working Mac have FireWire or Thunderbolt ports, boot the non-working Mac in target disk mode. Use the working Mac to copy the data to another drive. This technique won't work with USB, Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.
3. If the internal drive of the non-working Mac is user-replaceable, remove it and mount it in an external enclosure or drive dock. Use another Mac to copy the data.

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Message was edited by: burakbey

HI,
*"I have opened disk utility top repair disk, but when I click on disc image, repair / verify disk buttons are unavailable to click and S.M.A.R.T status is not supported."*
You need to select "MacintoshHD 10.5.8 not "disc image" in order to run Disk Utility and Verify and if necessary, Repair the disk.
That's why you are seeing this dialog.
*are unavailable to click and S.M.A.R.T status is not supported.*
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http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=7011117
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LimitLess- wrote:
Hi,
I had the power supply connected when I attempted it previously but even so my problem occurred. My rom is different and so I still need to update it.
Thanks
I wanted to mark your answer helpful too but I didn't know that I could only put it for 2 answers. Sorry
That was good advice by G-N and s/he is correct about it. Unfortunately, ASC allows only 2 "helpful" and 1 "correct" marks per thread.

Booting to safe mode? been stuck on boot screen for 2 hours? Help please

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