I'm running the latest stable GrapheneOS Build Number 2024101200 on a Pixel 7. The problem occurred after I rebooted my phone since ProtonVPN was having issues (not the cause, just providing some context), and I attempted to use my camera to take a photo. Upon taking a photo, an error message appeared saying the photo could not be saved to the internal storage. I checked the Files app, and the left sidebar did not show the usual categories of Images, Videos, Audio, Documents, and Downloads. No files were visible and it looked like the internal storage was not mounted. I decided to reboot my phone and all my files appeared again, but all the files were corrupted as I could not open any of the files. I rebooted again and all my personal files and folders were all deleted and all the default folders were all recreated.

I lost all my photos, documents, downloads, music and any other files I had on my phone. All app data was untouched. For example, Osmand country maps were all deleted, but my favorite locations were still saved. Other apps like email apps and Signal were still logged in and not affected.

Unfortunately, the timing was horrible as I was on vacation and lost all my trip photos. I've already come to terms that there is no way for me to recover the data.

Some extra notes:

  • My secondary profile was not affected and all my files and photos on my secondary profile can still be accessed
  • I cleaned up my phone prior to my trip so there was plenty of disk space so disk space was not an issue
  • I did not save any screenshots of the error message at the time as I could not save anything to internal storage and I did not have a second device to take a photo of the error message

I'm wondering if anyone else has encountered or heard of this issue before. My main concern is what happens if this problem occurs again and I lose everything again.

    confusionroom strange that only one profile was affected, but this does sound like a hardware problem. Try to back up data as soon as possible if you can.

    Hardware issues can be intermittent, so even if your phone is working now, you may have similar issues again.