User accounts missing on 2014 MBP 15" SSD after failed OS restore
My son has been using my old 2014 MBP 15" with a 1TB SSD. He ran out of space on the SSD (~60GB left) and the system crashed. After that, it would get as far as the login screen and accepting his password, but then it would go back to the startup screen.
I put it in target disk mode and connected to my 2020 MBP 13" (M1). I could see the user accounts and verify that the drive still had data on it, but I was unable to access the files because I got a password error (I have done this successfully in the past).
I used Apple online help chat and was instructed to reload the OS, but the MBP stalled during installation and has the same problem as before - it won't complete the startup process. But now it only shows the system files, not the user/account files. It does still show that the drive is almost full.
My main concern right now is trying to recover his data, because it wasn't backed up. I removed the SSD and put it in an OWC enclosure to simplify things. Now I can read it as an external drive on my 2020 MBP, and I have the same results. I can't see the User/account files, just the system files, and it shows up on my desktop as a 1TB drive with 60.45GB free. Here's how it looks to Disk Utility. As I recall, if I can find the user files I should be able to access them with the password for the account. I'm looking for the vault password, but that may not be find-able after all these years.
So the question is... is there any way to recover the data from that SSD?
MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.1