I updated to newer version of Ubuntu and lost all of my documents and photos. I used the icon that said this would NOT happen

Can you give the output of:

sudo fdisk -l; mount; lsb_release -a

What is the point of a backup if you misplace it.....

Thanks for responding.
 How would I find this?

You just open the Gnome Terminal where you can enter commands in ubuntu.
 Specifically that will be available in Menu-> Accessories -> Terminal
If you click on that terminal then a command prompt(after the dollor sign) will be blinking in that terminal window.
Now you type the commands giveny by actionparsnip at the blinking cursor one by one
sudo fdisk -l
the above command produces some output in the terminal and the same will be selected by using right click on your mouse and select all. And later you copy that selected text by right clicking on your mouse and click on copy. Here the Ctrl
+c shortcut not works so you manually copy the text from the terminal. Late the same text will be copied to this launchpad site.
The above procedure repeat for the remaining commands for mount and lsb_release -a

Note: if you use Gnome 3 or unity then you can find the command terminal by press the windows key and later type terminal in that search then you can find the command terminal and follow the above procedure.