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Restore data from a hard drive

Firefox Recover data
jbr replied 1 week ago
darkwolf573
darkwolf573

My Windows 10 PC died - I was able to recover the data on the hard drive using an enclosure.

Bought a new PC with Windows 11 preinstalled and want to restore my configuration

Things I want restored:

Extensions with their settings (particularly Noscript /uBlock custom filters)

Bookmarks with their icons


How can I achieve this ?

I never had sync set up so that’s not an option

Can I just copy the entire account over wholesale or at least the folders containing the extension info ?

I used a temp boot of Zorin to copy my files out of the old hard drive as Windows seemed to have difficulty ‘gaining permission’ to my old profile.

I want to keep a parallel install of Linux (Mint or Zorin) - how do I transfer my settings over there ?

Lastly would running a parallel Windows 10 install help me restore my settings if nothing else works ?


Thanks

My Windows 10 PC died - I was able to recover the data on the hard drive using an enclosure. Bought a new PC with Windows 11 preinstalled and want to restore my configuration Things I want restored: Extensions with their settings (particularly Noscript /uBlock custom filters) Bookmarks with their icons How can I achieve this ? I never had sync set up so that’s not an option Can I just copy the entire account over wholesale or at least the folders containing the extension info ? I used a temp boot of Zorin to copy my files out of the old hard drive as Windows seemed to have difficulty ‘gaining permission’ to my old profile. I want to keep a parallel install of Linux (Mint or Zorin) - how do I transfer my settings over there ? Lastly would running a parallel Windows 10 install help me restore my settings if nothing else works ? Thanks

All Replies (2)

wxie
wxie
  • Top 25 Contributor

In your GNU/Linux machine, I think you can try to open your restored profile from your Firefox directly:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data#w_finding-your-profile-without-opening-firefox

jbr
jbr
  • Top 10 Contributor

If you read the article linked above, you'll learn how the profile folder structure looks like.

For Windows to Windows migration, you can just replace the "inside" of the profile folder with the old data and it will pick up where you left off.

So if your old backup was in /Profiles/1234xyz.default-release and now your current machine has /Profiles/abcd0123.default-release — and assuming your new profile can be overwritten without looking back, you just remove (or move, back up) all the files inside the current folder on your machine (when Firefox is not running!), and copy over the files from your previous profile folder from the backup drive.

In theory it would be possible to just move the whole folder using its former ID and re–wire the profile 1234xyz as the new default, but for simplicity it's better to leave the linking to the app and just copy the content of 1234xyz into abcd0123 instead to confuse as little places as possible.

The same as above can also partly apply to setting up a Linux profile, however the data formats differ between platforms so it might not be entirely successful, again, the linked article mentions the details and hints at potentially just bringing over single data type at once, instead of the complete profile contents.

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