Question: I recently installed ubuntu and when I opened the pictures, videos, download, etc. files they didn't have any of the files I had from when I used windows, why is that?

Answer: 
Your Hard Drive is divided into sections called "Partitions". 
If you are using a newer version of windows, the windows partition may not be loaded (AKA "Mounted") by Ubuntu properly. 
If you found the drive and tried to open it you'd see an error saying that it wasn't shut down properly or was hibernated.

In this case, to get access to your windows files, you can use the `mount` command like this:

```
cd ~
mkdir windows
mount /dev/path/to/your/windows/partition/ ~/windows -t ntfs -o ro 

```

This will put the windows files into a folder called "windows" in your home directory.

To find the exact file path may be able to use the command `df -h` which will show you a list of devices (the rows starting with /dev) you can use as the first argument.

**Unfortunately, this will only let you *read* the files**, not make any changes or delete them. To do that you'd need to make sure windows shuts down properly. I believe this is referred to in windows as "Fast Startup" or something similar.

If your windows drive appears in the file manager and you try to open it, a more specific version of the mount command may be shown in the error message that pops up.
do you still have windows , are you dual booting ?

The files from windows will not appear in your Ubuntu system , it is another clean system .

If you still have windows you can access the files on the windows partition from Ubuntu but if you *installed over windows* (used the whole disk) they are gone!