breaking news, all images and files recovered !!! After mounting the binary sda18 using Disk Image Mounter they were in a “locked” directory named Media. Unlocking Media was just a right click open as root (Duh !) and inside the Media directory was /0 and under that all the directories as for a standard USB connection to an Android phone - including all of my user data (big smile !). All I needed to do was copy over to another directory on the PC and use a terminal to chgrp and chown on all of them.
Brilliant. I can’t express how happy I am - but I am really happy !
You guys are the best ! And /e/OS rules …
I may eventually be back to ask new questions about a clean reinstall (e-2.6.3 here I come) but I’ll open a new thread for that !