Why is sync messing up my bookmarks on new laptop?
I bought a new laptop and am setting it up. Of course the first thing is to install firefox and sync. Which is one reason Firefox is so amazing right? Get a new laptop and have your browser identical to your old laptop in seconds?
Day one it synced and looked great. But later on that day I noticed a folder of links on my toolbar was missing. So I went to my old laptop and it had disappeared from there as well. No problem. I'll just restore to a previous backup. So I had one from the day before and restored.
I never would sync that to the new laptop. So I just exported that backup to dropbox, and on the new PC I imported it. Everything looked great.
Today I wake up and the bookmarks are all messed up. I had several folders of the same name on the toolbar. All of them empty except one. I had missing folders on the tool bar. I had an additional folder I have never even seen before.
This should not be this complicated. You sync it. It works right? Or so I thought.
Sorry for the long post. But it's complicated. And frustrating. I have once again restored from the backup today to get it right. But that is a horrible solution going forward. I will have to be making new backups every day to make sure I have any new bookmarks. And add ons too I suppose.
All Replies (3)
Hi betbrett, Sory you are havong problems with Firefox & Sync Unfortunately you are probably seeing known problems..
Firefox does have some snapshot backups of your Bookmarks and you can make backups whenever you wish.
Personally I tend not to use Sync because of its shortcomings.
Sync is not very good with bookmarks, especially if you have a lot of bookmarks , very many changes or a slow connection. Setting up a new profle or new computer it is safest to use an ordinary backup rather than Sync.
Also note Sync is intended to Sync between devices i.e. two of your computers. It is NOT designed or intended to be used as a backup service.
I appreciate your reply but it seems as if you didn't understand anything I said in my request for help.
I have used the backup to get the browser on the new laptop identical to the one on the old one.
Since I have done that, sync has been changing things on both laptops.
And as to your last comment, clearly two difference laptops is two different devices. So I have no idea why you would even make that point.
Nevertheless I appreciate your attempt to help me resolve this issue.
If you are losing bookmarks from both devices repeatedly, and they keep getting lost after you restore a known good backup on each device - the bookmarks on the Sync server are corrupt and the corruption is being spread back and forth.
Do you have a "mobile" device, such as Firefox for Android or Firefox for iOS, connected to that Sync account? IMO, there is a problem with the "mobile" Sync that started roughly May or June 2015 after changes to Sync for the Firefox for iOS version, that I suspect is causing corruption on the "desktop" devices. I can't test that theory, I don't have a "mobile" device and the affected users who have posted here either don't follow thru on the device they're given or don't keep us informed as to their success or lack thereof with correcting their problem. Makes if impossible to file a Bug report and get a handle on what might be happening.
Or are you using another "cloud" or "sync" service on any of the connected devices?
No it shouldn't be complicated and usually isn't, but factors outside (of Sync & Firefox) can create incompatibilities that affect Sync or Firefox and could cause data loss or data corruption.
And yes, Sync works properly for the vast majority of people using it! But as John mentioned, some of us long term Firefox users may be or are biased against Sync for "sins of the past" or maybe changes from past functionality that we aren't happy with - I fall into both categories. And be aware that there have been two major changes to Sync over the last 6 years - the current version is the 3rn version of Sync.
If you have lost or corrupted data, the first thing to do is to disconnect all devices from the Sync server! And before you reconnect any device to the Sync server, reset your Sync password to clear the corrupted data from the Sync server. Otherwise is might become a viscous,never ending circle of data corruption.
And run Places Maintenance on each device before restoring a bookmarks backup; then see if the missing bookmarks are there. Those bookmarks may not be gone, just unseen due to corruption.
And if you do restore a bookmarks backup, run Places Maintenance on the device before connecting back to Sync.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/places-maintenance/