How can I access HDD to save files before fresh install of FreeBSD...

As mentioned in other posts I have been using net-p2p/rslsync with great success. I have three FreeBSD home servers, but two are off-site. I use Resilio to sync my files across three machines. If my house burns down I still have two copies elsewhere. When I built my new home server (AMD Ryzen 5 1600) I simply added my new drives, re-added the sync shares, and mowed the grass while I waited. The old home server was online so that made the data transfer to the new machine very fast. I'm very pleased with this. I'm using UFS, yeah I might get a corrupt file once in a while but none of my data I can take to heaven .

To overcome file corruption, prevent against accidental deletion, etc I still do manual backups using tar to a portable network storage drive.
That seems like a very easy way to a recover an entire system if I understand you correctly, although most likely beyond my skill level. Until I get to that skill level I'll probably keep "getting" my grass mowed down ;)
 
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