[Nexus 5 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ecksreturns:
Hey guys. Before I get to my issue and seek your help , please allow me to give you a bit of background about my self wrt Android OS and nexus devices. I have been a Nexus device user since the N1 days. OS flashing , Custom rom's , kernel patching , etc are nothing new to me. I can safely say that I am a custom rom addict , hence I know the mods for my devices intricately well. With this out of the way , I'd like to share the sequence of events that took place yesterday , which lead to this new thread , wherein I desperately need some expert advice.

- I was running the latest Bigxie 5.0 rom for my 32gb N5. It had root and TWRP and elementalx kernel

- I wanted to upgrade to the 5.0.1 without losing any data , so I first tried to sideload the OTA zip file , which failed with some error. I then followed this guide (http://bit.ly/1wNT36l) . I was able to therefore flash the 5.0.1 without losing data. I re rooted my phone , re flashed the recovery and the kernel

- At the same time I was upgrading my LG g3 to Lollipop. I wanted to try the "Tap & Go" data transfer feature , so I used that process to transfer the data from my current N5 to the new G3. Here is when the issue started. The data transfer didn't go through , as only the email accounts transferred to the G3. At the same time , I got this notification on the Nexus that Tap and Go was used to transfer my email accounts , and this notification couldn't be cleared from the notification panel. For some odd reason , I decided to jump back into recovery and wipe cache and dalvik cache to get rid of this notification

- As soon as I did that specific wipe and restarted the phone , the phone would just loop at the nexus image boot screen. 15 minutes later I went back into recovery and decided to use the "factory reset wipe". That too didn't solve my problem. Frustrated at the turn of events , I reflashed Bigxie's 5.0 rom from my internal storage , via twrp.

- The phone finally booted! But now the problem was that my Sdcard was showing no files. It was all blank. I checked with root explorer / es explorer and even when I hooked up my phone to my pc , the sdcard was showing no files. I could , however , see all my files in the root -- data -- media -- 0 folder. I tried my best to extract all my files from there , but each time I got an error that pretty much meant that no files could be moved from there. Interestingly , when I went into twrp , and went into file manager in the advanced options , it showed all my files on the sdcard as though nothing went wrong. So I could see everything on the sdcard in recovery , but nothing if i booted into the OS.

- Since I had made a backup of most of my data prior to any this happening , with the exception of certain whatsapp data , and after having spent almost 5-6 hours in figuring out where I had possibly gone wrong , I decided to wipe my device clean and just install the stock OS and pack this device away for good

- I downloaded the stock factory image for 5.0 from the official site and went back into bootloader and fastboot flashed each and every file. The phone booted , BUT , now my phone showed only 12GB as the size of the storage with 11GB available. This frazzled me beyond words! How did I reach this stage wherein my internal storage was screwed to this level?

- I again went back into bootloader , flashed 5.0.1 , wiped the device and now the phone is again stuck in a bootloop on the nexus bootscreen

I have finally decided to send the device to the LG service center near my office , but I wanted to share this experience with the community hear and seek their guidance on where I possibly went wrong and what I can do now to put things back together to some degree of normality. Have I somehow damaged something at the hardware level that a change of motherboard may be warranted or is this a pure software screwup?

Thank you for your patience in reading this loooooong story , but I had to explain each and every step in perfect detail.