Recover last version of bookmark file?

1

I updated to IOS 11.3 on my iPhone 8 yesterday. Unfortunately, it wiped my Chrome bookmarks and a few minor things stored on my phone. Even worse, I have Chrome set to sync between my phone and laptop. As a result, it wiped all but the most recently added bookmarks on my Windows 10 laptop so I can’t just send them back to my phone.

I wiped and restored my phone back to my backup file from a few days ago, but it recovered everything but my bookmarks.

I have Windows system protection set up on my laptop but when I went to the bookmark.bak file and tried to restore to the previous version it said none were available. Apparently Windows 10 doesn’t save user files.

I don’t believe I’ve logged in to any other computers where I could retrieve the file from, so I think my only hope is to recover the overwritten file. Is there a way to do this myself?

user175324

Posted 2018-04-10T15:34:20.500

Reputation: 19

Answers

1

Look to see if a backup still exists on your Windows 10 laptop.

%LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks.bak

while the Bookmarks should be the current version. My .bak was last modified yesterday, so it shouldn't be overwritten every time the browser closes or so.

It seems that you have already found this location and the current Bookmarks.bak was already broken. Next I would use a recovery tool like Recuva to scan through the drive for deleted files. For me it can find several files formerly located in %LocalAppData%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\, even without the deep scan mode.

If you have an SSD, you have better chances that the new version didn't overwrite the last one.

The file is in plain text, in some JSON format. This format is not directly importable to any browser, but it has all the information and can be converted into Chrome Bookmarks HTML file for example by using Chrome Bookmarks Recovery Tool. It's ja JavaScript tool that does the conversion locally, but if you wan't to be really sure it doesn't leak your information, download source and run it off-line.

Esa Jokinen

Posted 2018-04-10T15:34:20.500

Reputation: 615

Thank you Esa!! I will try Recuva tonight. Unfortunately my .bak file was overwritten about 90 mins after the Bookmarks file. I have a SSD so I’m hopeful this will work. – user175324 – 2018-04-11T17:58:52.270

I recovered a bookmarks.bak file that was a shadow copy from a few days before this happened. I saved a copy to my desktop and another copy replaced the current .bak file in the ...\Default\ folder, but I’m having trouble getting Chrone to update the bookmarks based on the file. To do a Chrome important have to convert it to an HTML, which I’m not sure how to do. Any suggestions? Thanks! – user175324 – 2018-04-13T14:04:31.367

Added information on how to convert the file. – Esa Jokinen – 2018-04-13T14:18:21.667

Thanks Esa! It seems it doesn't like my file though. I got the message: Last updated: 3/27/2018 (143845B) Error! The file is invalid. Try again! – user175324 – 2018-04-15T21:05:47.090

Asked: 2018-04-10T15:34:20.500

Viewed: 659 times

Active: 2018-04-13T14:18:01.733