Let’s first check whether your files are really gone or if it’s only the file-manager (Nautilus) that’s mis-behaving.
See if the data is still on-disk
Open Terminal( Ctrl+Alt+T ) and run
ls -lah $HOME
f you see all your folders (Desktop Documents Downloads …) the data is fine – Nautilus just isn’t showing it.
If you get “No such file or directory” or the listing is empty we need to look at mounts / disk health (skip to step 4).
Restart a stuck Nautilus session
Sometimes Nautilus hangs after I/O errors.
nautilus -q # quit all running instances
nautilus & # start it again
Check the window that opens – do your folders appear now?
Fix permissions that might have been changed
If the files exist but Nautilus still shows nothing, incorrect ownership is a common cause:
sudo chown -R "$USER":"$USER" $HOME
Then quit-and-restart Nautilus again.
Still blank? Try resetting its config:
mv ~/.config/nautilus ~/.config/nautilus.old
nautilus -q && nautilus &
Make sure your home partition is mounted
If ls $HOME is empty, confirm the mount:
mount | grep "$HOME"
Nothing returned - the drive that contains /home is not mounted.
Try:
sudo mount -a
If that brings it back, you probably introduced a typo in /etc/fstab while working on the USB stick – edit that file and remove / correct the bad entry.
Run a quick SMART check (in case the disk is mis-behaving)
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdX # replace X with the drive your /home sits on
Look for Reallocated_Sector_Ct* and *Pending_Sector_Ct > 0 or lots of errors in the log – that would mean the disk itself is starting to fail and you should copy your data off immediately.
If nothing helps
Boot a Live-USB (Try Ubuntu), open Files there and navigate to your internal drive under “Other locations”. If your home folders show up you can copy them to an external disk before doing anything drastic such as reinstalling.
TL;DR
- Check with
ls $HOME whether the files are still there.
- If yes – restart / reset Nautilus and fix permissions.
- If no – make sure your
/home partition is mounted and your fstab is correct; inspect disk health.
- Only consider a reinstall after you’ve verified the data is safely backed up.
Feel free to post any error messages you run into during these steps – that will narrow things down quickly.