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.jsonlz4 firefox bookmark backup files

Posted: 09 May 2015, 01:40
by balzac
i have been trying to recover my bookmarks with photorec without any result but now found out that firefox now stores them as .jsonlz4 compressed files instead of .json files. is photorec able to find these compressed files? I've searched through the recovered files but there is nothing with that extension.

Re: .jsonlz4 firefox bookmark backup files

Posted: 09 May 2015, 13:25
by balzac
I've made some changes and managed to restore this type of file without any problems or errors from a drive I deliberately formatted as a test. however when I run photorec on the real disk with only the photorec.sig enabled it's not running smoothly. so far, the sector being read jumps in steps rather than incrementally, and each time it does so it says there is a read error. when I ran photorec earlier without photorec.sig it ran fine and restored 200gb of files without any errors popping up.

is this normal?

Re: .jsonlz4 firefox bookmark backup files

Posted: 10 May 2015, 09:26
by balzac
the errors eventually passed and I found the files and figured out how to decompress them but the files are much larger than they should be, as much as 100-500mb rather than 500kb, and the decompressor only outputs them as empty .json files.

is there any way of recovering the files at their original size or any way of cutting them down to the right size?

Re: .jsonlz4 firefox bookmark backup files

Posted: 17 May 2015, 20:11
by cgrenier
I have uploaded a new 7.1-WIP. Can you try it with your custom signature disabled ?
Recovered files will still be larger than necessary.

Re: .jsonlz4 firefox bookmark backup files

Posted: 19 May 2015, 19:59
by balzac
thanks for the help. I tried 7.1-WIP and it found the files but were, as you'd said, still larger than the original size, and the decompressor wouldn't process them. But I took another look at the decompressor source code and tweaked it and luckily managed to get it to ignore the excess data and decompress the file.

Re: .jsonlz4 firefox bookmark backup files

Posted: 17 Jun 2016, 23:16
by jsonlz4
I HAVE THE ANSWER!


After spending hours and hours searching and searching how to decompress the stupid jsonlz4 file so I could recover my bookmarks from a previous backup (after my computer crashed and windows had to be reinstalled).....

it turns out that you dont need to decompress it at all.

It all seemed so complicated, and there are a million answers out there, including crazy scripting and all kinds of crazy stuff. But its actually SUPER RIDICULOUSLY simple...

If you HAVE your stupid jsonlz4 file, here's ALL you have to do.....

Go to "view all bookmarks", go to "restore", and select the stupid jsonlz4 file. BOOM! BOOKMARKS RESTORED!!!!!!!!


I hope this post saves someone from the agony I had to go through, and the (what I thought was) complete devastation at the loss of my very important and enormous collection of bookmarks.

Lesson learned though.... I'll certainly be making a backup!