Hey Paul - what a drag!!!
For all your time & troubles, it’s not totally in vain. You have convinced me never to do such a thing.
In fact if anything goes even remotely wrong like that, my mind starts drifting to: save & move some stuff, reformat the drive, & start from scratch.
Fresh installs may be a long drawn-out pain, but it’s nice to start all over again with a clean controlled system.
It’s also a good way to filter out many things that you no longer use or want installed.
What I now have is a hand written log with each step [software installation, driver installs, hardware connection points] along the way.
So now I don’t even have to think what comes first & what comes next.