Opening protected user folders on boot-drive with a fried System folder?

[Minghold]

Situation: Intel-era Macbook with High Sierra OS. System folder is cooked (machine will crash to black-screen and restart a few seconds into any attempted boot). Disk Utility and DiskWarior successfully repaired any drive/partition problems from a booted external, but the internal's system folder is still fried.

I do have the user password, but cannot access the internal drive's passworded user folders from an external drive. SIP is disabled, and nothing is encrypted.

--Short of attempting an in-place reinstall of High Sierra (probably safe) or trying to clone the Core Services folder and other bits from a working external High Sierra system folder (probably not safe), or creating a new High Sierra partition or user folder elsewhere and migrating (safe, but a lengthy chore) what other options are there to pop those user folders open on legacy machines?
__________________
FOUND SOLUTION: Disabled SIP, used an admin account on a second drive to Get Info on the internal, granted read/write access to all categories, checked ignore ownership, then hit the gear to apply changes to all enclosed items, all of which served to unlock the user folders.

 

[Fishrrman]

Is the drive physically removable?
If so, can it be placed into an external enclosure?

If this can be done, what I'd do next is to try this:
- put in external enclosure
- connect to another Mac
- attempt to over-ride permissions:
a. do a "get info" for the drive's icon
b. in get info, go to botton and click lock
c. enter your administrative password
d. put check into "ignore ownership on this volume" (sharing and permissions)
e. close get info.

Does doing this now give you access to the user account folders?

 

[chown33]

Have you looked into Target Disk Mode?

Transfer files between two Mac computers using target disk mode

You can connect an Intel-based Mac to another Mac using a USB, USB-C, or Thunderbolt cable, then transfer files.

support.apple.com

I don't recall if it requires a bootable OS on the Mac, but it basically makes the Mac look like an external drive.

 

[Minghold]

Have you looked into Target Disk Mode?

(....)

Is the drive physically removable?

Neither were necessary. See OP edit for found solution.