Mac Pro Freezes within seconds

Question

I have a Mac Pro and last week I occasionally occurred problems with the spinning beachball/pinwheel (2-3 times a day for about 45 seconds on each spell) This morning I opened the machine and the problem was obviously worse, locking up for minutes at a time (instead of seconds) and then often as every 10 minutes. As the morning went on it the spells got longer and more frequent. Till finally by early afternoon the machine pinwheels within seconds after restart, and refuses to snap out of it.
My main goal right now is to save my info, but it only gives me seconds after boot up to recover my info and I have several GBs of info to extract.
I've tried:
Disk Utility (CD)
Reset PRAM
Safe Boot &
Archive & Intall
I would like to do a erase and install, but I'm unable to buy enough time to save my info to another HD.
Thank you for any assistance!
Message was edited by: YGD

Answer 1

The worst idea is to continue to use or reinstall the OS.
One reason I always recommend Mac Pro owners to setup a small emergency boot drive with Disk Warrior, and a couple of clones of your system.
Disk Warrior has Preview mode that mounts the partition as Before and After images to allow you to recover files and see what you can copy or will look like.
I would start by building a new system - new drive and clean install and keep that (image it) for maintenance only, and clone it to 3rd drive which will become the new system boot drive.
And yes Disk Warrior will do a better job than Apple First Aid even today. And can help. You may have any number of issues with files, directory, your home folder (Application Support / SyncServices is one).
Then with a clean system see what is anything is the cause. It may be a faulty cable or external device that doesn't play nice.
TechTool Pro 5.07 is handy too for scanning and looking at files; at disk media. you want to rule out a bad sector that needs to be deactivated and mapped out.
And you may want to pull the hard drive and put it in an external FW case while you build a new foundation to work from and become the new system. Easier to turn it on after startup, stay out of the way, and repair the directory.
Data Recsue 3 is another utiility worth looking at if you have to recover files.