Mom's Mac Mini was acting up, asking for mail passwords and then complaining they were no good. I decided to update her to Catalina, and I guess she didn't have enough space or something because the install is now in a reboot/fail loop. Can't boot to safe mode, and don't have any time machine backups. I decided I had better pop the drive in an external case and pop it in my mac to save the files. The drive is there, but shows up blank in the finder. Just empty white. I did a repair and it failed the first time and then said it completed.
Still nothing. Then I am now running a scan in Techtool, and it checking the files system. I am literally seeing all of the files listed on the screen as they are checked so I know there are there. I can get info and see that 1.9GB is fulled and that 102 GB are free. Still can not see any of the files.
Tried booting from a backup drive on her actual Mac mini (external case) and still when I open the drive it shows a big explanse of white nothingness. The files are there, the disk check says the disk is fine. Catalina won't install, I can't boot back to El Capitan (her last update) and she says she needs the files on there because they aren't backed up properly (of course).
Any ideas? If I can get the files off I can format the drive and do a fresh install. All her pictures are on the drive, and most have not been backed up.
Thanks for any help.
Still nothing. Then I am now running a scan in Techtool, and it checking the files system. I am literally seeing all of the files listed on the screen as they are checked so I know there are there. I can get info and see that 1.9GB is fulled and that 102 GB are free. Still can not see any of the files.
Tried booting from a backup drive on her actual Mac mini (external case) and still when I open the drive it shows a big explanse of white nothingness. The files are there, the disk check says the disk is fine. Catalina won't install, I can't boot back to El Capitan (her last update) and she says she needs the files on there because they aren't backed up properly (of course).
Any ideas? If I can get the files off I can format the drive and do a fresh install. All her pictures are on the drive, and most have not been backed up.
Thanks for any help.