Why is my macbook air's hd full suddenly while trying software update?

I recently tried to do a software update which failed and totally filled my hd... I had 60+ gigs of open space.

After the failure my computer was stuck restarting and reloading the update perpetually.

Once I booted it in recovery mode I was able to do first aid and it prompted me to try to re-install Monterey.

Sweet! I thought... then of course next page you have to select a hard drive.... and suddenly mine only had 500mb of available space?

So last option was to try to reboot using disk utility, right? This prompts to reboot the mac with the old OS that was on there before the update... well, all that did was bring up a black screen with a circle and slash through it... which means that the OS i'm trying to boot is "incompatible" with my machine.

What on earth?

After hours with "support" all they did was repeat the same basic info available to everyone on here... no advanced info at all. Best thing of all is when I point blank asked if there is any way to rescue the files they very confidently answered no. This was not just one person, it was multiple people over the course of two days.

Well, guess what? This is absolutely not the case. If you have run into this issue and unfortunately didn't back up every single thing, or had issue with time machine being corrupted/ broken, you still can access and download all of your files using "terminal" the unix command line. You can access this from recovery mode, even without an OS, as I did.

I was able to search my hd and copy any and all files I had on my computer to a USB key.

After multiple convos with support I am convinced they purposely do not want to give you this information.

They are incredibly fast to pressure you to do a hard reset of your machine. Basically the people that work for Apple know next to nothing about computers, do not trust them!!

I genuinely hope this helps someone in a similar situation. You actually can access all your files and save them to an external. You don't even need to do "target disk mode" which support will also discourage or outright say it wont work. They will never tell you about terminal... I just don't understand why?

Macbooks are still great computers but the support is absolute trash.

If you have any friends that know the slightest thing about computers, consult with them first. DO NOT TRUST APPLE SUPPORT, they're looking for the quickest fix possible at your expense.

PS: although this is an incredibly helpful post for many that have posted similar issues, I fear apple will find a reason to erase this post. Come at me bros!!! I'd love to hear the excuses.