Sorry, Sync wasn't intended to be used to backup Firefox data prior to reinstalling the operating system. It's purpose is to synchronize multiple separate Firefox installations, usually on different devices.

The old Firefox 26 version used a different version of Sync, the current version of Sync came about in Firefox 29. The largest change in Sync had to do with the Recovery Key ('secret key') - no longer something the user see's or has to deal with.

You should have installed Firefox 28 or earlier and then connected to your Sync account to recover your data, and then updated to Firefox 32. By creating a new account with the same email address, your data was wiped from the Sync servers to allow you to start a fresh.

This is really absurd. The reason of creating new account was mentioned above. Since I was unable to login and Firefox was showing my email as a new email address.

I am using Firefox since years but this thing disappointed me. Better not to use snyc option or switch to chrome :(

Thank you for the information. I would love if still something can be done by using the secret key.

More than likely you couldn't connect to the Sync server with the newly installed Firefox 32 because the server was expecting Firefox 28 or earlier. You can't upgrade your Sync account on fresh installation. As I mentioned, if you had installed Firefox 26 [the version you last used with Sync], or Firefox 27 or 28, then tried to connect to Sync, you probably would have had better results; but I can't state that as a certainty.

Sorry, but Sync was being used in a manner in which it wasn't intended to be used - by reinstalling the operating system without having another device (with your data) connected to that account. That was then compounded by not installing a version of Firefox that was compatible with the version of Sync that the Sync system was set for compatibility.

Hey, Long back, I had synced this Firefox with Linux also. I believe that Linux is not the updated version. Can I get the data from there? If yes, then what are the steps I should follow?

Do I need to delete this newly created account from Windows first? Also do I need to uninstall the latest version in Windows and install the older version say 20?

- Thanks Ravi

Also, Please note that by saying Linux, I mean that Firefox installed on Linux. This Linux machine is turned off since 4-5 days.

the-edmeister said

More than likely you couldn't connect to the Sync server with the newly installed Firefox 32 because the server was expecting Firefox 28 or earlier. You can't upgrade your Sync account on fresh installation. As I mentioned, if you had installed Firefox 26 [the version you last used with Sync], or Firefox 27 or 28, then tried to connect to Sync, you probably would have had better results; but I can't state that as a certainty. Sorry, but Sync was being used in a manner in which it wasn't intended to be used - by reinstalling the operating system without having another device (with your data) connected to that account. That was then compounded by not installing a version of Firefox that was compatible with the version of Sync that the Sync system was set for compatibility.

The problem here is that the user is not warned. Instead of saying that the email was not registered, the user should have been told to login with an older version of firefox. This problem of lack of warning is also apparent when we are using a master password. How difficult would it be for the software to check if we were using sync and to display a warning: "by setting a master password syncing of password will be disabled"?