Join the Mozilla’s Test Days event from Dec 2–8 to test the new Firefox address bar on Firefox Beta 134 and get a chance to win Mozilla swag vouchers! 🎁

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Hard drive crash, have manual backup of places.sqlite, substituting backup of places file does not restore bookmarks, what can I do to restore my bokmarks?

  • 5 பதிலளிப்புகள்
  • 1 இந்த பிரச்சனை உள்ளது
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

After restoring my hard drive (Windows 10) and reinstalling Firefox, I cannot recover my bookmarks. I probably outsmarted myself by manually backing up the SQLite files form my profile. I thought I could simply replace the default places.sqlite file in my new firefox profile, but the bookmarks don't show. How can I restore my bookmarks?

After restoring my hard drive (Windows 10) and reinstalling Firefox, I cannot recover my bookmarks. I probably outsmarted myself by manually backing up the SQLite files form my profile. I thought I could simply replace the default places.sqlite file in my new firefox profile, but the bookmarks don't show. How can I restore my bookmarks?

தீர்வு தேர்ந்தெடுக்கப்பட்டது

File was apparently corrupt.

But I found an older .json file and restored from that. Only missing about a year of bookmarks instead of 15 years.

Lesson learned - don't think you are smarter than the software's backup program - just do what you're supposed to do.

Thanks for your help.

V/R, Chris

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (5)

I notice that you posted this same question under another name (ckwatson).

Did you have a problem with finishing the the registration with that name?


Did you also create a backup of the compressed .jsonlz4 backups in the bookmarkbackups folder?

Did you make sure to remove any other places.sqlite files, especially places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal, after restoring the places.sqlite file?

Did you previously had any (bookmark) problems with that profile?

I mis-typed my email the first try.

Strange thing, when I delete the places.sqlite file, (and the places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal are also deleted) and then copy the "old" places.sqlite file in to the profile folder, the size of the "old" file changes from 189KB to 10,240KB. Then, when I open Firefox the bookmarks are empty.

And no, I didn't copy the compressed .jsonlz4 backups - I didn't know I needed to because in years past just copying the places.sqlite file back into the profile worked.

The places.sqlite file is always created in a multiple of 10 MB chunks, so if the file you copied is only 189 KB then there is likely a problem and the file is corrupted.

You can try to check the file in a hex viewer or maybe a text editor to see if it is actually a valid places.sqlite file if you compare it with a valid places.sqlite file.

தீர்வு தேர்ந்தெடுக்கப்பட்டது

File was apparently corrupt.

But I found an older .json file and restored from that. Only missing about a year of bookmarks instead of 15 years.

Lesson learned - don't think you are smarter than the software's backup program - just do what you're supposed to do.

Thanks for your help.

V/R, Chris

You're welcome.

I see that the-edmeister marked your above reply as the solution.

cor-el மூலமாக திருத்தப்பட்டது