Your fstab file can remain unchanged and still fail, if the drive or user identifiers have changed unexpectedly. It depends on how you’ve configured your fstab entries, which is why it’s helpful to share them. In future, no one will be able to offer much assistance without seeing the entry details. Either way, glad you were able to get it sorted!
If you want free tier with good privacy practices, Proton is going to be the best option.
I have several paid webhost accounts already, so I just use those for email. Any important messages (which are increasingly rare) are saved to PDF and stored offline (business/tax/medical info, etc.), and the rest is purged once read/sent.