It seems like it purged my home directory when I turned off the computer.
I do not think so. You probably have /home on a separate partition and that partition is not mounted for some reason. /home would then appear empty.
Do you want to recover some data there or are they all backed-up somewhere else? You mentioned GNOME Disks. Its "gear" menu contains "SMART Data & Self-Tests... (Ctrl+S)". Use it if you do not want to recover any (more) data and want to discover whether the hardware is sane.
