Linux neophyte here; so be forewarned.

I have an older laptop that I had installed Ubuntu 14.04 on and, when an 'update' to 15.1 was offered, i downloaded it.

What I ended up with was a notice on the screen [now gone] that indicated that my system could not handle the upgrade due to space limitations [i'm being told]

In the meantime, I have uploaded Mint on the same machine, and, am just wondering whether, or,how there is any way to retrieve the files the way windows might have stored in in an "old" ( ??? ) file on the machine itself.

Not sure if i'm explaining myself in the most goodest of ways, but could sure use some help.......

Thanks!

More information is certainly needed.

Can you still boot into one of the Linux installs? If so, what is the output of the following commands in a terminal (you may have to run them with root privileges):

[CODE]fdisk -l
df
[CODE]

It's may not be relevant, but it might be useful to know the make/model of the laptop and the size of the HDD.

Be sure to surround the output of any commands with "Code" tags which become available when you click the "Go Advanced" button at the bottom of the "compose post" window.