safe mode for iphone 5c

A few days ago my iphone 5c crashed. It won't turn on and all that will come on is the apple logo. I can get it into recovery mode. I don't want to restore so I was hoping to find another way. I read about the safe mode but I can get my phone to go into it. I hold down the power and home button until the apple symbol turns off and then the power button until it turns on. Then I hit the up volume button. Is this correct? I didn't know if it was different for different phone types. Also if anyone has any other ideas for me to try it would be greatly appreciated. If I restore I will loose a lot of important data.