Firefox and Chrome Profiles lost in re-image. How can I find them again?

David74437

Commendable
Nov 15, 2016
6
0
1,510
So basically my Windows 10 64-bit had become very slow and glitchy, so for the past few months I've been slowly getting all my files off onto my 2TB backup drive (Win10 is on a WD 1TB HDD). Today I re-installed the OS and started to put my stuff back on it. I started by re-planting my "google" and "Mozilla Firefox" folders into the Programs (x86) folder, but when I opened those programs to see if it still worked, I found out my restored tabs, Bookmarks/Favourites, History and probably more is missing.

So it turns out these Geniuses who made Firefox and Chrome thought it would be a brilliant idea to put the profile data in a completely different location...I thought they would have been sensible enough to put everything in one place so I didn't bother to double check where the profiles were stored. Its my fault for not double checking, but still frustrating at the same time. So I didn't actually backup my browsers...also the only cloud thing I use is gmail/g+ so unless it tied my profile (Which it seems like is not the case) to them automatically then I don't think it's on any cloud.

On the new Windows 10 (Still on the same WB 1TB HDD) I have only re-added chrome, firefox and I downloaded a "GPU driver downloader", but not activated that yet. So if I'm lucky my profiles might still be intact and possibly recoverable. How do you recommend I go about recovering this data.

If it turns out my profiles have already been overwritten then I might just have a backup of them on my Samsung 1TB HDD, you see sometime last year I cloned the entire WD 1TB HDD onto the Samsung 1TB HDD to see if the glitchiness and slowness were caused by the WD HDD itself, but when I tested the Samsung clone it was just as slow/buggy. So I deleted the partition and put the Samsung drive on my shelf. If I remember correctly I have not used the Samsung HDD since so I should have a backup of my profiles there, but again I need a way to navigate and find those files.

However like I said that was last year sometime, I can't remember how many more bookmarks/favourites I made since then and if my "Restored Tabs" have changed since then, so I only want to consider recovering from the Samsung drive as a last resort.
 
Chrome and Firefox allow you to create accounts, if you log back into a Google/Firefox account it should import all your favorites and add ons, you shouldn't need to back them up locally. It lets you login anywhere and have access to all your favorites and links

Chroime might be linked to your gmail address, though not sure about Firefox as you have to set it up manually
 


I have 3 different gmail accounts and multiple computers each with their own profiles. I tried logging into my oldest gmail on the new Win10's chrome, but nothing was restored. I have never gone out of my way to tie my profile to any of my gmail accounts so I'm doubting that its saved on the cloud.

Over night I installed and ran the EaseUS trial which searches for lost files and I can confirm, it seems to have found my chrome and firefox profiles (The paths C:\Users\David M\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\<The lost profile> & C:\Users\David M\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<The lost profile> have been found (David M was my user name on the old Win10 so I know this is the right one))

The problem right now is that the trial only lets you search for lost files, but you need to pay to restore them and they want about $100 AUD. IMO that price is way too much for a 15.5 MB program that that gives me access to lost files on my own HDD, not to mention I might never use this product again after I restore my profiles.

So does anyone know a free or much more reasonably priced program that can restore my files?