the dreaded question mark/folder

[wonderings]

My mom has a 2017 13" MacBook Pro without Touch Bar. This used to be my computer but replaced it with an M1 Max as it was way under powered for what I need and use it for. I upgraded the hard drive with an OWC flash drive (1 tb). Things have worked fine for about a year and lately she has been getting sporadic issues when starting up. Now it is on the dreaded flashing folder with question mark. I booted into recovery to look at the hard drive in disk utility. The only drive I see available is "OS X Base System only disk available".

As much as I pushed to have my mom do regular backups with Time Machine she is learning the hardware how important this is. I am doing everything I can to try and see if I can retrieve what I can but so far I cannot get anything. I had thought of trying to run target disk mode with USB-C but that does not seem to work, at least I did not get the bouncing icon across the screen that shows I am in target disco mode. Anyone have an idea on how I can either connect to try and do some file retrieval or if there is anything I can do to even get it booted up in the OS again?

 

[Fishrrman]

I would put the factory-original drive back in, and see if it will boot that way.

Then I'd try to get an enclosure for the OWC drive.

I'd boot from the internal (factory) drive.
I'd connect the OWC drive to a USB3 port.

Then see if I could get the OWC drive mounted on the desktop.

If it will mount, then it's possible to copy things from it.

If you can't get it mounted at all, the drive may be failing or failed.
I would not hold out much hope for getting stuff from a failed SSD.
With platter-based drives that was often possible, not so much with an SSD.

There are data recovery places that MIGHT be able to get something, but they are very VERY expensive -- many hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

Final thought:
Teach your mom to back up, or do it every time you visit.