Mac Pro Won't Boot from any HDD

My system:
2008 8-core Mac Pro running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard
4 HDDs installed, 2 of them are a striped RAID 0 that is the bootup volume, a couble of external hard drives (1 of them a bootable clone), a DVI display
backed up with Time Machine; thanks for the concern.
Problem:
I came home one day, and my computer was acting funny. It was fine earlier in the day. Time Machine had failed a backup, an AFP mount had unmounted with an error, Dropbox was trying to sync but couldn't because of bad access permissions for a file, and Terminal wouldn't open, giving me a message about an invalid shell. I restarted, and it failed to restart, so I turned it off. I thought it was a corrupt filesystem (and striping is unstable, so it would make sense), but no, no other bootable disks worked.
Boot chime plays, grey screen comes up with Apple logo, wheel spins forever.
ATI graphics card fan runs pretty fast after a minute or so.
Light is solid, not blinking to indicate a RAM problem.
What I've tried:
Googled the problem. Got results about MacBook Pros. Did "-MacBook" in the search. Got similar questions but no solutions for my Mac.
Tried booting from an install DVD and the clone. Same thing happened.
Reset the PRAM (twice). No effect.
Reset the SMC (twice). No effect.
Unplugged the monitor. Graphics card fan wasn't loud, but the computer still wouldn't boot.
Unplugged all USB and FireWire devices. No effect.
Left the computer unplugged for an hour, which also resets the SMC. Who knows, this sometimes works! It didn't.
Any ideas?

Booting in Safe Mode did not help, but it did show a grey circle with a cross through it instead of an Apple logo like before.
I remembered that there's an Apple Hardware Test (a bit hard to figure out how to do on your specific machine ), and I booted into it. Before I even ran the test, it told me that there is an error. The error message was just the name of one of my RAM slots. So... a piece of RAM might be dead. I ran the extended test, and it was halfway through after 30 minutes, but I stopped it because I don't have enough time. I have to continue this tomorrow.
As for the GPU, its fans might just be running because the system runs them at a high level by default when it's in certain states. I know older Macs did this in Target Disk Mode with every fan, and the GPU fan was running during the AHT too. At least I hope this is the case. Right now, it seems beyond a hard drive problem. Maybe booting from a DVD works because it only uses 1 RAM slot or something. I'd much rather have a piece of inexpensive RAM be dead than my GPU, and besides, I've kinda wanted to upgrade the RAM anyway.

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2006 4x2.66 Mac Pro won't boot from any media

Hello,
This Mac Pro will get to the boot options screen, where I'm able to see all attached disks. But once one is selected, it goes to the typical Apple logo with spinning icon, then flashes blue for a second before going to a grey screen with SBBOD.
I've tried booting up with each RAM card removed and get the same issue wither way. Nether RAM card indicates bad RAM. The diagnostic lights on the board above the RAM do not indicate a problem.
I've also tried booting without the video card by using a test system that has Remote Desktop enabled, but no luck.
Reset PRAM and SMC.
At this point the only thing I can think of is the logic board, but that seems a bit extreme. Does anyone have any ideas what else I might try?
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Are you using the original grey install disks?
One disk will have Apple hardware test instructions printed on it. Try following that to see if it can boot to run a test. (Hold D at boot IIRC).
You can try downloading the AHT images & burning them to a CD if you know the model number - there is a list of AHT images at…
https://github.com/upekkha/AppleHardwareTest
You could also try target disk mode to see if the hardware can boot & allow the internal disk(s) to be read on another system (assuming you have the correct leads - Firewire or Thunderbolt are supported).
How to use and troubleshoot FireWire target disk mode
Target disk mode is a firmware feature so it may help isolate the OS's or disks as the issue.
Don't forget about single user mode & verbose mode - they may give you more items to look at, but can be very confusing to look at
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Hi,
We have a Dual Xeon Mac Pro that has been running fine since 2007 the person that uses it reported that it started making loud banging noises (how loud I do not know as thats quite subjective although it was loud enough to warrant other people in the office going to see what the noise was) and then the desktop crashed and now when it boots we get the folder with a flashing question mark.
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I had a quote from the local Apple Service Centre and Media for this machine was £70.
Luckily we found the Media for the Mac Pro inside a box for some other software.
I have since been able to retrieve the data by inserting the disk into a SATA equipped G5 and using disk utility on that machine to repair the volume and disk.
I've retrieved the data and the disk, volume and permissions structures all check out.
However the Intel Mac Pro will not boot from the now repaired drive, or from the original DVD shipped with the computer.
So off to the Apple Service Centre it goes for hardware diagnosis. I expect this to be expensive
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When I removed it, it was to install mavericks into it, via usb, with the other macbook, through disk utility, but disk utility was unable to read it then.
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It doesn't look for bad sectors or directory or file problems.
Clone your SSD now that you have a clean OS and has the Apple updates on it. Before you make changes.
Install TRIM Enabler 2.2+ on it and any boot volume, to enable TRIM and so that Disk Utility's Repair Disk will trim cells. Mountain Lion Recovery won't which is a shame, so...
Clone and keep bootable backup clone of your system to use for maintenance.
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SSDs really need extra care, and even with TRIM, to be repaired from time to time and couple times a year, to do an erase and restore from a current image.
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Hi everybody.
This morning my iMac just didn't wanna boot up, it powers on and the start sound plays but nothing more, all white screen.
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https://discussions.apple.com/message/19939004#19939004

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