moto g 2015 with stock rom goes into boot loop after "optimizing apps" phase

I rebooted my Moto G 2015 after an app began behaving erratically. The device then went into a boot loop. The first thing wrong with the boot is that it goes through the "Optimizing apps" stage, but as I had not wiped cache I wouldn't expect it to do that. After it gets through my 117 apps it says "Starting apps" and then reboots - I get the spool of thread and the stitching animation and the whole process starts over.

I've tried going into recovery mode and telling it to wipe cache there - I would expect cache wipe to take just several seconds like on other phones I've used (haven't ever done it with this one), but here it prints "formatting /cache..." and sits there, and sits there, and every 10 minutes, is still sitting there.

Is there any way from the recovery mode to get data copied off the device's internal memory? I have a few things there that weren't backed up. I tried running "Apply update from ADB" in recovery mode, then trying the "adb backup" command, but I got the error "adb: unable to connect for backup: closed".

My guess is that this phone has bad memory and I'll have to eat my lost data and send the phone back to Lenovo for warranty service. But if anyone has any ideas for things to try, let me know!

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