Can't Find Chrome Bookmark file in crashed drive

I had a windows 8.1 PC crash, it wasn't getting internet no matter any basic fixes I tried, so I just did a 'Refresh Without Affecting Your Files' but then it froze at "Setting up a few more things".

I was told it did something like ran out of space and just could not complete the refresh/install, it kept freezing %3 "Setting Up a Few More Things". It was only a 2450GB drive, would have been nice if it warned me or something.

I then bought a new 1TB SSD and Windows 10 and was able to get most of my stuff back but I can't find the Chrome bookmark file(s) in the crashed drive (when I connect the two) in
D:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks)

There's not even a Google folder before there.



I did not install Chrome yet on this Windows 10 drive because that might conflict with the old copy of Chrome. In my bottom left Search bar I searched 'bookmark', then search by Document, but it finds nothing either.


Along the lines I may have deleted a chrome icon in the old drive, I'm not really sure. I did have Chrome installed on the new Windows 10 drive at the time and maybe it was conflicting or something but I'm not sure if I even deleted a Chrome icon or anything Chrome or Google related in the crashed drive.

obviously I didn't use sync or a google account to back these up.

I read various other forum threads which say your chrome bookmarks DO get removed from -Refresh Your PC without Affecting You Files-, but they should be moved to a newly created folder C:\Windows.old (or maybe in my case D:\), either way, I don't see the chrome or bookmarks files.

I was suggested Everything.exe and search for bookmarks and if not found assume it's gone. Remember this is a failed Refresh that keeps freezing at %3 'Setting Up a Few More Things", suposidly from the drive itseld running out of space, so maybe it never finished the :\Windows.old Chrome copying.

I do have Show Hidden Files and Folders enabled.
Someone said it could be in "Default" or "Profile 1" or "Profile 2".


Also was suggested:
If System Restore was enabled on the crashed drive you might be able to get your bookmarks using Shadow Explorer. Download the portable version.
Read the documentation. Click the dropdown box to select your drive letter of the crashed drive. If it finds any Restore Point it should let you browse to your Chrome Folder
ShadowExplorer.com - Downloads
ShadowExplorer.com - Manual


If neither works, I'll wait a few more days and maybe someone will come along with another solution, if not, then the drive is getting broken up into pieces and I'll definitely be sure to synch or back up bookmarks regularly for now on.

Yes I bought windows 10 from newegg as a USB stick. The 8.1 was OEM. it's the same motherboard but I'll be done with 8.1 after this (actually preferred it and could swear it was faster for random things, I'm running a i7-4790K not overclocked, and 16gb ram and ~$150 GPU) but 8.1 support ending/ended and 10 is more secure).

I didn't upgrade because when the 8.1 was frozen I was using a sketchy XP laptop I'd rather not download/upograde an OS through, maybe paranoid but I preferred to spend ~$125 and play it safe.

"Hi, whilst you can get a couple of high density magnets out of it and a couple of other bits to play with, before you take such drastic action see if it's still a viable physical drive:

You may already have it in a caddy.
Use Hard Disk Sentinel (SSDs too) trial- portable version available- best instant analysis I know of right on its GUI.
Run that, click the tab on the left for your suspect drive and see what it says.
It attempts to estimate lifetime remaining and will instantly report on weak and damaged sectors.

You can use a free program such as Crystal Diskinfo to continually monitor SMART params and alert you to degradation."

Not sure what you mean by this. The 8.1 drive is only a 240GB (not 2450 typo in OP) and was told it did some stupid locking itself thing from running out of space. But those programs might be able to fix it or just confirm the drive is bricked itself? Ei

-------
In the crashed drive, I clicked on windows.old or Windows.old(1) and got a permission error. tried again and pressed Continue as admininstrator and it shows the files (but no google folder or bookmarks where it would be).


Everything.exe doesn't find anything for 'bookmark' except for my current Edge C drive. Everything.exe does search both C and E (crashed) drive confirmed by searching for things only found on the E drive. BTW D:/ is the crashed drive too but is System Reserved and only a few Temp and Recovery files (a blank Recovery.text file) files.


With Windows 10 now installed, when I boot with both drives connected, W10 flashes a press any key to skip disc checking, for once I let that go through and it actually did complete and said it was doing it for the crashed E:/ drive, but seems like nothing changed and still can't find files. I then tried booting with only the E drive connected hoping it was somehow fixed but it did the same freeze at %3 "setting up a few more things" then red error box Restart the installation to proceed (or something like that, which would likely wipe everything though).

I then Tried ShadowExplorer but it shows nothing at all in the right window for D and E crashed 8.1 drive. C:/ (current Windows 10) shows it correclty like the instructions say "This is what ShadowExplorer looks like if everything works correctly."
So I guess there's not even a system restore point saved on the crashed drive, correct? I did have system restore enabled on that drive. I think I even tried that before 'Refresh your PC without affecting your files' caused this whole problem.

BTW, I uninstalled Everything.exe though control panel but I don't see ShadowExplorer to now uninstall it. Is it not shown because it's just the portable zip version I downloaded to desktop and is not actually an installed program, and I could just delete those files?



Last thing I'll try after any more suggestions if any, is boot with the 8.1 CD and only the 8.1 drive and Do whatever install option it shows least likely to wipe everything and hope that fixes it at least to make a Windows.old folder or something. I think the only option it has now though is to fully format and reinstall windows deleting anything on there now.

I installed Chrome to my new non-problem drive, searched the old drive for files, tried Everything.exe again but it found nothing. There's no new Google or Chrome folder in the crashed drive in E:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks
I also made sure to save a new bookmark in chrome because I read the boobkmark files won't even be created until you save one.


I then tried Recuva and set it to search the E:/
Recuva found 1.9 million E:/ files.
Then Searched 'bookmark' in Everything.exe didn't find anything on the E:/ but maybe it doesn't search Recuva results


Searched Recuva results, I specified 'bookmark' in E:/ didn't find anything. It takes a while like 30 mins to do a full 1.9 million file scan but I ended up doing that twice since unsure exactly how to search for a specific file name, then I clicked FILE NAME row top bar to show results in alphabetical order and scroll to b, and I do see several 'excellent' condition 'bookmark' files. Some are unrecoverable, or very poor but there's 5 Excellent.

There's 3 excellent named bookmarks, bookmarks_1, and bookmarks_3
And 2 excellent bookmarks.bak and bookmarks_1.bak

But I exported them to desktop, and when I copy paste them to my current chrome folder and overwite the existing, neither combination of any of these brings back any old bookmarks.
Is there a special way to do this? convert it to html or something and Import option Chrome has?

I get Error! The file is invalid. Try again! when I try to convert these bookmark and bookmark.bak files which Recuva recovered when using this tool that's supposed to convert them to usable .html

Chrome Bookmarks Recovery Tool



The only information I found on that are these two non-english translated posts, basically saying the files might be unusable?

Como converter .bak em html?? (Chrome Bookmarks Recovery Tool) - Google Chrome Community

Internetprogramme: - Chrome Bak Datei beschadigt? | Dr. Windows



BTW, I know I ended up with bookmark, bookmarks_1 and bookmarks_2 because they would have otherwise overwrite each other. So I remove the _1 and _2 before trying to just copy paste them into the chrome folder. But I think I need to convert them first anyway. Recuva says they're Excellent condition and does have other bookmark files in Poor or Unusable condition which I didn't extract from the results.



I right click these files>properties, it says it's either a 'file' for the bookmarks and the .bak ones says it's a .bak file.

When I try to open these files, I get a bunch of weird symbols like this á¥Wïø.

I don't want to copy paste too much in case there's a password or something in there.

I don't know what format this is, maybe there's something that can just convert it to english and then I can at least have text of what the bookmarks were?

Maybe extracting directly to desktop makes it a shortcut and I should have instead extracted to a folder. I'll try another Recuva scan in the meantime but doubtful that I only extracted Shortcuts to the decktop from Recuva.

- - - Updated - - -

I posted a new thread that is much shorter than this
https://www.tenforums.com/bsod-crash...ml#post2181443


since this thread got messy and doubt a lot of people would sort through it all