Are unsorted bookmarks saved as .json files, under bookmarks.html or in places.sqlite ?
I had accidentally deleted the entire profile AND emptied the recycle bin! Using a program called Recuva I was able to restore what i emptied from the recycle bin to its EXCELLENT STATE, so there was no partial corruption whatsoever. I was able to find a .json file dated back to 4/3/2013 which would be great considering i did all of this today. I also found my places.sqlite that was dated back as well and an bookmarks.html file that was dated 7/22/2010 .. I dont know which one would hold my "unsorted bookmarks" however, i have tried the .json file that i recovered fully (by the way, all were recovered at an excellent state which again should create no issue) and i get "unable to process the backup file".. the .html loads nothing. and i replaced the new place.sqlite that was created upon reinstallation (and put it in a new folder) with the older excellent state one.. and nothing happened. i have exited mozilla and restarted it. tried all three again. still no avail. please help.
All Replies (6)
If you delete the current places.sqlite file and place this JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups then Firefox should rebuild the places.sqlite file and restore all bookmarks in it and this includes the bookmarks in the unsorted folder.
If you still get this error then the file is corrupted and can't be used to restore the bookmarks.
Did you try to restore the bookmarkbackups folder with JSON backups in it?
i did what you originally suggested and nothing.
what do you mean by did i restore the bookmarksbackups folder with the json backups in it?
Both places.sqlite and JSON and HTML backups contain all bookmarks, including bookmarks stored in the unsorted bookmarks folder. So if you can't restore such a JSON backup then this JSON backup file is corrupted and recovering the file correctly with Recuva has failed (i.e. some clusters may already have been used to store other data or the file was fragmented and the wrong clusters were restored).
Firefox creates a daily JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups for each day that Firefox is started with a maximum of ten. So you can try to restore this bookmarkbackups folder after you have restored the main profile folder and see if you can recover some of the JSON backup in it.
this is mind boggling because the json file said it was excellently recovered while other files found in other areas said partial and corrupted, etc. what is the main profile folder called so that i can see if i can restore it and find a bookmark backups folder in it?
is a places.sqlite-shm file good for anything?
Can this be restored with a system recovery of the computer?