All files disappeared

Hello, I’ve been using Cryptomator for about a month with no issues at all. My protected vault is on an external drive that also houses a bunch of unencrypted data. Just yesterday, I went to open my vault and I’m faced with the dreaded “Cryptomator could not find a vault at this path.” message.

When I browse to the path that it is expecting, I see only a directory called “ProtectedVault” which is empty. No other files exist, including the .rtf file that was there prior warning you not to edit anything.

Note that the rest of the same external drive seems fine, and all the data is there. It’s just data that was in this one folder that has been affected.

Feels like a long shot, but is there any hope in recovering this or am I out of luck?

Welcome to the Cryptomator Community :slightly_smiling_face:

If the vault folder on your filesystem/external drive is empty, there is not much to recover. You can check with a file recovery application, if you can restore deleted/moved files, but even when you restore files, these might be corrupted.

Cryptomator does not protect you from data loss, only prying eyes. Only a backup strategy can prevent that.