This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

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

Can't recover information from old sync account, and update to new sync

more options

I am trying to recover old information from old sync account, and update to new sync. I have not used old Firefox Sync for quite a while after my computer died (with Firefox on it).

I have installed Firefox Portable 28.0 (portable version because I could not find where to download old version of ordinary Firefox), entered email, password and recovery key (Firefox Sync key) - I got recovery key after HDD failure made it impossible to recover bookmarks.

I am waiting now more than 1 hour after logging to old sync... and nothing. No bookmarks downloaded from sync, no extension info, no history. I have logged to https://account.services.mozilla.com/ and checked that I have 37.6201171875K data (via quota increase), so it doesn't look like it was deleted because of more than 1 year of inactivity... or was it?

I am trying to recover old information from old sync account, and update to new sync. I have not used old Firefox Sync for quite a while after my computer died (with Firefox on it). I have installed Firefox Portable 28.0 (portable version because I could not find where to download old version of ordinary Firefox), entered email, password and recovery key (Firefox Sync key) - I got recovery key after HDD failure made it impossible to recover bookmarks. I am waiting now more than 1 hour after logging to old sync... and nothing. No bookmarks downloaded from sync, no extension info, no history. I have logged to https://account.services.mozilla.com/ and checked that I have 37.6201171875K data (via quota increase), so it doesn't look like it was deleted because of more than 1 year of inactivity... or was it?

All Replies (2)

more options

"... I got recovery key after HDD failure made it impossible to recover bookmarks. "

Does that mean that you created a new "key" for the old Sync account? If so, your data is gone. Sync data is encrypted via that "key", which means the data on the server can't be decrypted - making is useless.

more options

the-edmeister said

"... I got recovery key after HDD failure made it impossible to recover bookmarks. "

Does that mean that you created a new "key" for the old Sync account?

No, I created a new Sync account, and used it for quite a while till computer failure. I got recovery key for active Sync account. I'd like to recover at least bookmarks saved with [old version] Sync.