Trying to find out what this image at startup is is?

A little more detail. Under the "About" menu it's named "Recovery Assistant". Only option is to pick a disk to recover and I have a 2TB volume that is partitioned into 2 volumes. It doesn't give me access to external devices such as my TIme Machine.

Unfortunately, using command r only brings me to the Language Chooser. When I choose the language the Mac asks me which partition I want to recover and shows me the two available partitions. There are no other utilities available at that juncture. No disk utility. The only drop down menu here is "About Recovery Assistant", Change Language, and Erase Mac. Frankly I think if I could run ** on the internal it would solve the problem. I'm considering picking up a used working unit and upgrading it to Sonoma, if it's not already there, and then create an external hard drive and boot the damaged unit from the external I create. Seems like overkill just to run disk utility, but I have no other ideas beyond that at this point. My TM is up to date but I discovered I password protected it and I put a clue in but cannot find a password for it. Kind of boxed my self into a corner I suppose. In the environment I'm in I didn't really need a password for the TM, so new policy going forward for me is no passwords on Time Machine or else document it properly.

Thanks PRP - you caught me there. I do own that unit and just spent 3 mos in and out solving an issue on a problem with it. I guess that unit left it's imprint on my brain having typed that model so many times. I have that unit on Moneterey.

No, the unit I am on now is a Macbook Pro 2020 13" Intel 16/512 i5 running Sonoma.. Spent some late nights working on it this week. Up early today to start again. Thanks for catching that and bringing it to attention.

I apologize for the misdirection.

The 2tb actually came out of the 2015 Mac. It is a Smasung 970 that was an upgrade to that Mac. The 512 in the 2020 mac is soldered to the board. So I am attempting to keep the data. All my tax info is on that unit. Not quite ready to lose everything just yet.

Understood. For the backup drive I have an external 1TB Samsung drive

The 2TB would normally be in the 2015 unit as the main drive for that machine. I pulled it out of the 2015 unit to see if it would boot the 2020 unit with the OS (Monterey) that is on that drive. It won't boot the 2020 unit. I just don't have a plethora of equipment like I used to when I worked in networking and maintaining Macs for k-12 institutions before retiring. It's sort of like "Gorilla repair" trying to use what I have around me to see if I can piece together a solution before spending more $ to get this unit and data back. Not a pretty picture. It is what it is.

RIght. Unfortunately, The Macbook Pro 2020 13" won't load the full recovery mode with menu as it KPs before it gets there. Thus the reason for the odd looking "language chooser menu" called "Recovery Assistant". Recovery assistant, I'm finding out, is limited to a system recovery and wiping all the data. So I cannot get to disk utility that way. I'm considering using a Target firewire connection to mount the drive from that mac on a 2015 MBP with Thunderbolt 2 to run Disk Utility on it, or at least moving my data over before wiping it if ** won't work that way. Finding the correct cable is proving to be difficult though. Any thoughts or help much appreciated.

Ah, I didn't know that. I will look into it. I appreciate that information!

Thanks HW for chiming in. However I'm pretty sure it's going to erase my entire drive and data If I do that. That's not the result I want.