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Where does Firefox 3.6.10 store tab and history?

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bjabinder
bjabinder
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I am running Firefox 3.6.10 under Windows XP, the latter fully updated. However, I keep my Firefox profile on a D: drive, so that it is unaffected by an operating system reinstall or other modification affecting the C: drive.

I have recently suffered several Firefox crashes, most seemingly caused by Firefox or add-on updates (I have now disabled automatic updates for everything). But the most recent crash was caused by my laptop's battery expiring. In all these cases restarting Firefox produced a "welcome" startup screen (my personal settings in Options specify a blank screen), and the loss of both saved tabs and history.

After trying various ideas to recover the lost data, to no avail, I resorted to restoring the whole of my C: drive (using 3rd party software, not Windows's lousy backup facility). On then starting Firefox, lo and behold! the tabs and history were restored to the situation at the latest backup date.

My understanding is that tabs and history data used to be stored in the Profiles\sessionstore.js and Profiles\places.sqlite locations respectively. Interestingly, while it is asserted that Profiles\places.sqlite contains both history and bookmarks data, although I lose the history, I do not lose the bookmarks!

When I end a Firefox session, saving the modified tabs configuration, and any modifiied bookmarks, I find that the sizes and dates of the Profiles\sessionstore.js and Profiles\places.sqlite are unchanged. Yet when I restart Firefox the updated tabs and history are recovered!

From all of the above, I conclude that, at least for me, Firefox has stopped saving tabs and history data in the Profile folder, and instead has started saving it somewhere else on the C: drive. This is, of course, most unsatisfactory, as my whole purpose in putting the Profile folder on the D: drive was to prevent it from being corrupted by the vagaries of Windows. So, can anybody enlighten me as to what may be happening in my case, and how I might be able to recover the lost information without the drastic remedy of restoration of the whole C: drive from a backup facility (which is too disk space-consuming to deploy more than monthly)?

(By the way, I am aware of the facility to save the tabs under Bookmarks, but that is not a satisfactory solution; and anyway, the history issue remains unresolved.)

Hoping some wise person can help,

Brian Binder

I am running Firefox 3.6.10 under Windows XP, the latter fully updated. However, I keep my Firefox profile on a D: drive, so that it is unaffected by an operating system reinstall or other modification affecting the C: drive. I have recently suffered several Firefox crashes, most seemingly caused by Firefox or add-on updates (I have now disabled automatic updates for everything). But the most recent crash was caused by my laptop's battery expiring. In all these cases restarting Firefox produced a "welcome" startup screen (my personal settings in Options specify a blank screen), and the loss of both saved tabs and history. After trying various ideas to recover the lost data, to no avail, I resorted to restoring the whole of my C: drive (using 3rd party software, not Windows's lousy backup facility). On then starting Firefox, lo and behold! the tabs and history were restored to the situation at the latest backup date. My understanding is that tabs and history data used to be stored in the Profiles\sessionstore.js and Profiles\places.sqlite locations respectively. Interestingly, while it is asserted that Profiles\places.sqlite contains both history and bookmarks data, although I lose the history, I do not lose the bookmarks! When I end a Firefox session, saving the modified tabs configuration, and any modifiied bookmarks, I find that the sizes and dates of the Profiles\sessionstore.js and Profiles\places.sqlite are unchanged. Yet when I restart Firefox the updated tabs and history are recovered! From all of the above, I conclude that, at least for me, Firefox has stopped saving tabs and history data in the Profile folder, and instead has started saving it somewhere else on the C: drive. This is, of course, most unsatisfactory, as my whole purpose in putting the Profile folder on the D: drive was to prevent it from being corrupted by the vagaries of Windows. So, can anybody enlighten me as to what may be happening in my case, and how I might be able to recover the lost information without the drastic remedy of restoration of the whole C: drive from a backup facility (which is too disk space-consuming to deploy more than monthly)? (By the way, I am aware of the facility to save the tabs under Bookmarks, but that is not a satisfactory solution; and anyway, the history issue remains unresolved.) Hoping some wise person can help, Brian Binder

All Replies (1)

cor-el
cor-el
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You can use this to find the location of the Firefox Profile Folder

The size of place.sqlite doesn't change if items are added or removed unless there is no empty space to add new items.
The size of sessionstore.js should change, but you may not notice it if you only see a size in KB and not in bytes.

If places.sqlite is missing then Firefox will try to restore the bookmarks from a .JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.