Manually recovering Firefox bookmarks and passwords from the files
December 4, 2015 5:06 AM   Subscribe

I'm connecting to a laptop HD with an enclosure and trying to recover some files from it. The highest priority are the owner's Firefox bookmarks and saved passwords, since apparently some of those passwords are unknown beyond being saved in this Firefox install. I would just boot the HD, log into Windows, and go look, but while it's perfectly mountable, Windows becomes unresponsive after a short time of trying to actually run from the drive. What files do I need to be looking at, and how do I actually use them?
posted by Pope Guilty to Computers & Internet (14 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: The drive is possibly failing, you are risking losing all the files by continuing to use it.

The best practice is to create an image of the entire drive to a new drive, but if the drive is in really bad shape, it may not survive long enough to do so and if there's relatively little information you need to get off the drive, that could be the bad choice.

If you want to try to surgically rescue the Firefox files, boot using a Linux on USB system, mount the drive, and look in /wherever/you/mount/it/Users/username/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles/somethingrandom.default/

Copy everything in the folder to a safe place. The Firefox documentation will tell you how to import them into a new system.
posted by Candleman at 5:26 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: This is how I recently did the same thing when migrating to Linux:

Where to find the file you need (it's the profile file) is explained here. It depends on the exact OS (Windows version).

How to use the file: copy the file onto a USBdrive or other removable medium, paste it into the directory where the profile file in a new install (on a different disk) lives, and change the .ini file in that same directory to point to the just-pasted file, not the new and empty one.

I agree that it's best not to boot that disk anymore. Boot a Linux live CD or USB instead, and use that to browse to the files you need.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:29 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: After you rescue the important files, here's a previous ask that discusses some of the software used to do it. I'm old school and use dd, which can be dangerous, the ddrescue program that someone else mentions is safer.
posted by Candleman at 5:36 AM on December 4, 2015


Response by poster: So we're clear, I'm not booting the disk, just mounting the enclosure when going after specific files.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:41 AM on December 4, 2015


but you said "run from the drive". what are you running if you're "just mounting the enclosure"?
posted by andrewcooke at 5:48 AM on December 4, 2015


Response by poster: I'm on my computer with the malfunctioning drive mounted via one of these.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:54 AM on December 4, 2015


Response by poster: Oh, I see. I'm not running from the drive, because when trying to actually do so Windows locks up. Hence mounting it via the enclosure.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:58 AM on December 4, 2015


Best answer: It varies between Firefox versions but from the user profile directory get:
Passwords - key3.db, signons.sqlite/signons.json if they use the password manager, possibly also cookies.txt/cookies.sqlite if they store login info in cookies
Bookmarks - places.sqlite, and there's also a bookmarkbackups folder with older versions.
posted by Bangaioh at 5:59 AM on December 4, 2015


Best answer: Honestly, I've always just grabbed the whole profile directory (not profile file as I said before).
posted by Too-Ticky at 6:02 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Important correction to my above reply: in the latest Firefox releases, the password manager file changed to logins.json, not signons.json. key3.db is still essential.

Just another reason why getting the whole profile dir if possible is much simpler and safer.
posted by Bangaioh at 6:39 AM on December 4, 2015


Response by poster: Hmm, it's not wanting to grant me access to the Users directory. I'll have to use an OS X machine or make a Linux live system, something that doesn't give a shit about NTFS permissions.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:04 AM on December 4, 2015


Best answer: On the Linux Mint forum, I see this tool being recommended a lot, for making a live Linux USB pendrive from within Windows.
posted by Too-Ticky at 7:17 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


Best answer: If you're running with admin rights just override the permissions.

Not running Windows atm, but iirc in XP/7 it was as simple as right-clicking the Users folder > properties > permissions, then recursively adding rw access to your account (or to every user). I don't remember if you have to go into folder options beforehand and toggle some setting so that it displays the permissions tab in the properties dialogue box.
posted by Bangaioh at 8:11 AM on December 4, 2015


Response by poster: The first couple of times, I tried that and it failed, but eventually it worked and I was able to extract (at a shockingly low transfer rate) the profile directory! Thanks everybody!
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:41 AM on December 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


« Older Books about physics (or related subjects) for...   |   Because "The one that I want to buy" is not a... Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.