My laptop crashed and I cannot get it to operate. Hadn’t had a problem in years. When I select advanced recovery mode options, I get a long list of recovery mode options for Linux 19,1 cinnamon, (aprx 50 options). I pick one option after another, but am confused as how to proceed after that. Lots of text appears after each option is selected...which is meaningless to me. Blinking cursor awaits my commands. I tried mount -0 unmount ,rw /, ....holding shift key at boot up...etc...and various suggestions from the Internet. Successfully rebooted with usb (Linux 19.1) to connect to Internet...but then could not reboot again later with usb as password was no longer recognized. I am clueless.

A similar crash happened years ago. I finally replaced that hard drive and went on my way ...till this latest crash. I still have the old hardrive but haven’t been able to access it’s contents. I keep it as a momento . This is torture for a non techie like me.

I would suggest to try booting from a live cd/usb like GParted and look for the SMART information about the drive in question.
From a terminal window you can give
This gives a report on the drive's health, on screen.

"19.1" suggests you may be using Linuxmint. I suggest you ask the mods to move this thread to https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/ if I'm correct in that assumption. If I'm not, we need at least to know the distro you have installed. Info about your laptop could be useful if not mandatory as well. From a rescue media, output fromwould give us this basic info.

To give is info asked for in #2, try this:which should provide a URL you can give us to see it.