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Laptop dead! New laptop, have access to old drive. How do I get bookmarks & previous windows opened

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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My laptop died. I purchased a new one and pulled the SSD drive from the dead laptop and hooked it up to the new laptop with a SATA to USB cable and have access to the drive now. How do I pull all the information that was in Firefox (bookmarks, open tabs when laptop died, etc.) from the old drive to the new laptop?

My laptop died. I purchased a new one and pulled the SSD drive from the dead laptop and hooked it up to the new laptop with a SATA to USB cable and have access to the drive now. How do I pull all the information that was in Firefox (bookmarks, open tabs when laptop died, etc.) from the old drive to the new laptop?

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Primary location used for the main profile that keeps your personal data (Root Directory on about:profiles).


You can copy certain files with Firefox closed from one profile folder to your current profile folder to transfer your personal data. Note that best is to avoid restoring a full profile folder and only restore important files that are safe to restore/transfer.


  • bookmarks and history: places.sqlite
  • favicons: favicons.sqlite
  • bookmark backups: compressed .jsonlz4 JSON backups in the bookmarkbackups folder
  • cookies.sqlite for the Cookies
  • formhistory.sqlite for saved autocomplete Form Data
  • logins.json (encrypted logins) and key4.db (encryption key/primary password) for logins saved in the Password Manager
  • cert9.db for certificates stored in the Certificate Manager
  • persdict.dat for words added to the spell checker dictionary
  • permissions.sqlite for Permissions and possibly content-prefs.sqlite for other website specific data (Site Preferences)
  • sessionstore.jsonlz4 for open tabs and pinned tabs (see also the sessionstore-backups folder)