Issues with Sync - Where's all my stuff?
So I've been using Aurora for a while, and after my hard drive crashed last year, I've kept everything synced. Now my hard drive was failing and my school will provide a new one no charge. I figured that I had everything synced and everything would be fine. I got the new hard drive installed, downloaded everything and logged into sync in the newest Aurora.
I was able to log in fine, but nothing synced (no bookmarks, no add-ons, no themes. Nothing). I read there was a new sync system (I had no idea) and that it wasn't compatible with the old, so I tried installing an old version of Firefox to sync to with an old recovery key I have. It doesn't even think I have an account, and I was logging in with the same account info. So I'm a bit screwed right now.
I need all of my stuff back and at this point I have no idea where to start. At this point, any advice would be welcome.
Thanks, -Megan
Tutte le risposte (9)
First off, Firefox Sync is NOT a backup system, and has never been meant as one. You should be doing regular, physical backups (not just of your Firefox, of your whole computer) and not relying on sync.
Did you already log into Sync with Firefox 32? if so, your data is likely gone and un-recoverable, espicially if youcan't log into your old account.
Do you have a physical backup of your data from the old computer? or access to the old hard drive?
I don't have access to the old hard drive because the school takes them when we get the new one. I've had sync as my back-up before and had no issues. I find it inherently frustrating that I didn't know there was a new sync, and that the new sync didn't update automatically like everything else in Aurora does.
I'm now up shit creek without a paddle, and I may have to start rethinking which web browser I'm using, even though I'd prefer to stick with Firefox. I used chrome for different things, and not as recently, but at least Chrome saved all my bookmarks and settings.
Sorry you lost your data.
First, why are you even using Aurora? It isn't a separate "version" with different UI images, it is an alpha 2 level development version for what will be in Firefox two versions down the road (12 weeks). It updates daily (unless you turned off the automatic updates) and "stuff" breaks from time to time as code is changed as part of the development process. Its intended users are people who want to participate in the development process by testing, providing feedback, and participating in the Bug reporting process, to help the Mozilla developers.
Not that it makes a difference at this point.
I use Aurora because I like seeing what's coming out early. I do try to report issues as I see them, I'm not very good at coding so I don't necessarily know specific bugs/coding errors to report.
I realize because it's an Alpha browser, it'll have more bugs than the standard or Beta, but I'm trying to figure out how none of the data had synced with this new sync. I didn't disable the auto-updates and it does update everyday. If this new sync has been around a while, why would none of my data be there?
Had you been using Aurora since before Firefox 29? If so, had you physically updated to the new sync? Sync your Firefox bookmarks, history, passwords and more?
If you didn't, then when you logged into sync using the new system, all your data was wiped as a security feature. If you have logged into old sync first, or had updated to the new sync before switching hard drives, you most likely would have been fine (although, again, sync isn't a backup service).
As it is, physical backups would have avoided this. Did you make a backup of your user data folder, or can you ask the school for your hard drive?
Before we go any further, can you check with your tech support and see if there is any chance that they might still have the old hard drive that they removed? They might be able to recover your Firefox Profile (which contains your data) by connecting it as a slave drive via a USB adapter to another PC. Just because that old hard drive wouldn't run in your PC, doesn't mean it won't still work as a slave drive long enough to try to recover your data.
Quite honestly, I am a bit surprised that the "tech" didn't ask if you wanted the old drive back, or ask if you needed the data that was on the failed drive, and then offered to try to recover your data.
If you were able to log in to Sync after you installed Aurora - let's see if an Error Log was created if there was a problem getting connected to the Sync server or if there was a problem with the Sync process itself.
Might help us figure out what went wrong, but I don't think it will help you recover your data. Going back to 25 and trying to use the old Sync Key probably made your data useless now, if it was even there before that.
Type about:sync-log in the URL bar and hit Enter. Then see if there is an error report from the date / time of your first attempt to connect to Firefox Accounts with Aurora. That data should remain in your Profile regardless of which version you are now using.
I called support and they said they'd already disposed/sent off the hard drive (if there's nothing physically wrong, they re-cut them, or they go for e-cycling/disposal). I'm not a huge fan of our tech dept, but the laptop is technically school-property while I'm an undergrad, and we can't do any hardware stuff ourselves or it voids the warranty they give us.
So I went to " about:sync-log" and there are about 8 error .txt files in there; 4 from last night and 4 from this morning. I'm not sure if the first one is from what I tried in Aurora or if it was from the old version. I only used the old version when I was trying to go back to get the old data, everything else I've done has either been in Aurora or Chrome.
It does looks like it's still syncing in the New Sync from yesterday/today when I logged in on Aurora (the new sync). What's so weird to me is that when I initially installed Aurora and logged in, it didn't give me any issues logging into sync, the only issue was that it didn't actually sync anything to the "new" browser.
You can view those error logs in Firefox, and then copy and paste the contents of those logs to http://pastebin.com/.. Then post the URL that you are given into the Reply box here.
Start with the oldest file, from the first time you Sync'd that new installation. That will probably tell us what we need to know.
This is the oldest error.