How to Extract All Pictures from Apple Photos to a Backup Drive as Images on a Windows PC When Your Old Mac Won’t Boot
When a Mac stops booting, it can feel like years of memories are locked away. For many people, the Photos app on their Mac holds an entire lifetime of pictures: everything from family holidays to important milestones. But even if your old Mac won’t turn on properly, the good news is that your photos are usually still safe. They’re stored inside a single package file on the Mac’s drive, and you can recover them on a Windows PC as long as the drive itself is still functional.
Understanding How Mac Photos Are Stored
Apple’s Photos app doesn’t store pictures as simple JPEG or PNG files you can browse easily. Instead, it saves everything inside a special container file called Photos Library.photoslibrary. To the user, it appears as a single file, but it’s actually a folder that holds thousands of image and video files, thumbnails, edits, and metadata.
The Photos Library is usually located in this folder on a Mac:
Macintosh HD / Users / [Your Username] / Pictures / Photos Library.photoslibrary
Even if your Mac won’t boot, that library file still exists on the Mac’s internal drive, unless the drive is physically damaged. So, the goal is to get that drive connected to a Windows PC, access the files inside that library, and copy them as regular pictures to an external backup drive.
Step 1: Retrieve the Mac’s Internal Drive
If your old Mac doesn’t power on, you’ll need to access its storage drive directly. How you do this depends on the model of Mac you own.
Option 1: If It’s an Older Mac with a Removable Drive
For older MacBook Pros, Mac minis, or iMacs with traditional hard drives or SATA-based SSDs, you can remove the internal drive and place it into an external drive enclosure. You can buy inexpensive enclosures that connect to a Windows PC via USB or USB-C.
Once you install the Mac’s drive into the enclosure and plug it into your Windows computer, it will appear as an external drive, though it might not open yet, since macOS uses a different file system format.
Option 2: If It’s a Newer Mac with a Soldered Drive
Newer Macs (especially those with M1, M2, or later chips) have their storage soldered directly to the motherboard, making it impossible to remove the drive. In that case, you may need to take the Mac to a professional repair service or Apple technician who can help extract the data. If the drive itself still works, they can copy the Photos Library to an external drive that you can then use on your Windows PC. If your Mac is completely dead but you have an existing Time Machine backup, you can use that backup drive instead, it will contain your Photos Library file as well.
Step 2: Connect the Mac Drive to Your Windows PC
Once you have the Mac drive (or a Time Machine backup) connected to your Windows PC via USB or Thunderbolt, Windows will detect it. However, most Mac drives use the APFS or HFS+ file system, which Windows cannot read by default.
To access the files, you’ll need to use special software that allows Windows to read Mac-formatted drives.
Step 3: Access the Mac Drive from Windows
There are several reliable third-party programs that can read APFS or HFS+ drives on Windows. You can install one of these tools to mount your old Mac drive so it appears like any other folder in File Explorer.
Once you’ve installed a compatible tool and mounted the drive, open File Explorer on your PC. You should now see the Mac’s drive listed. Navigate through the folders until you find:
Users / [Your Old Mac Username] / Pictures / Photos Library.photoslibrary
This is the main container that holds your photos.
If you had multiple user accounts on your old Mac, check each user’s Pictures folder, as each may contain its own Photos Library file.
Step 4: Copy the Photos Library to Your PC or External Drive
Before doing anything else, make a full copy of the Photos Library. This ensures you’re working with a safe duplicate, not the original data. Drag the Photos Library.photoslibrary file from the Mac drive to your Windows computer’s local storage or, better yet, directly to your external backup drive. Depending on the number of photos you had, the library could be anywhere from a few gigabytes to several hundred. Copying may take a while, but once complete, you’ll have a full, readable version to work with.
Step 5: Understand the Photos Library Structure
Since you’re on Windows, you can’t open the Photos Library directly using Apple’s Photos app. However, you can still access the original photo files inside it because the Photos Library is just a folder, even if it looks like a single file on a Mac.
To open it, right-click the Photos Library.photoslibrary file and choose Open (or Open with → Windows Explorer) if prompted. If that doesn’t work, you can also change the file extension temporarily from .photoslibrary to .zip or simply right-click and select “Show Package Contents” if the Mac drive viewer software supports it.
Inside the library, you’ll see a folder structure like this:
Photos Library.photoslibrary
└── Masters (or Originals)
├── 2017
├── 2018
├── 2019
├── …
The Masters or Originals folder contains all your actual photos and videos, organized into subfolders by year, month, and day. These are the raw files that were imported into Photos, usually in JPEG, HEIC, PNG, or MOV formats.
Step 6: Extract the Original Photo Files
Open the Masters or Originals folder. Inside, you’ll find hundreds or thousands of subfolders, each containing photos from different dates or albums.
Select everything inside this folder. You can do this by pressing Ctrl + A to select all, then right-click and choose Copy.
Next, navigate to the external backup drive you connected earlier. Create a new folder there called Recovered Photos from Mac (or any name you prefer). Right-click inside that folder and select Paste.
Windows will now copy every image file from your old Photos Library to the backup drive. This process might take quite a while depending on the total size and speed of your drives.
Once complete, all of your pictures and videos will exist as normal files that you can open, move, or edit on any computer, no Apple software required.
Step 7: Organize and Verify the Files
After the copy finishes, open a few folders on your backup drive to verify that the photos look normal. You should see standard file formats like .jpg, .heic, .png, and .mov. Try opening a few with the Windows Photos app or any image viewer. Because the Photos Library organizes images by import date, you’ll probably find folders named with random letters or numbers. These reflect how Photos stored them internally. If you prefer a cleaner structure, you can reorganize them manually later by year, event, or other categories. You can also use Windows search to find all photos in the backup folder. Simply open the backup folder in File Explorer and type *.jpg or *.heic into the search bar to view all images at once.
Step 8: Handling HEIC and MOV Files
Many newer iPhones and Macs store images in HEIC format and videos in HEVC (MOV) format. Windows 10 and 11 can open these files, but sometimes you may need to install an additional codec or convert them to JPEG or MP4 for compatibility with older software.
To convert HEIC photos, you can use the built-in Photos app or free converters online. For videos, most media players, including VLC, can play MOV files without issues. The important part is that you now have the original image data preserved in its native format, ready to use or convert at your convenience.
Step 9: What if You Want the Edited Versions Too?
The Masters or Originals folder contains your unedited photos — exactly as they were imported. If you had made edits in the Photos app (for example, cropped images, adjusted colors, or added filters), those edited versions are stored separately inside the Photos Library under:
Photos Library.photoslibrary / Resources / Media / Modified
You can navigate there and copy those folders as well if you want the adjusted versions. Some people prefer to keep both sets — the original files and the modified ones — for maximum flexibility.
To keep things tidy, you can create two folders on your backup drive:
- Original Photos – containing files from the “Masters” or “Originals” folder
- Edited Photos – containing files from the “Modified” folder
This gives you a full archive of everything from the old Mac.
Step 10: Verify File Integrity and Size
After transferring all photos, right-click the main backup folder on your external drive and select Properties. Check the total number of files and the total size. Compare this to the size of your Photos Library file on the Mac drive, they should be roughly similar.
Next, open several random images from different folders to ensure none are corrupted or unreadable. If everything opens correctly, your extraction was successful.
Step 11: Optional – Create a Second Backup for Safety
Once you have all your pictures on the external drive, it’s smart to make a second copy. Hard drives can fail, and photos are irreplaceable. You can copy your backup folder to another external drive or upload it to cloud storage. Keeping at least two copies in different locations is a good long-term strategy for data safety.
Step 12: Clean and Organize for Easier Browsing
If you want to make browsing your recovered photos easier, you can reorganize them using Windows. Sort by Date Taken to group photos chronologically. You can also rename folders to meaningful names like “2019 Vacation” or “2020 Family Events.” Windows’ Photos app can automatically group them by date once they’re imported, giving you an organized, searchable collection just like on a Mac.
Step 13: Troubleshooting Common Problems
Problem 1: Windows Doesn’t Recognize the Mac Drive
If Windows doesn’t show the Mac drive after connecting, double-check that the enclosure or cable works. Then, ensure the Mac drive is spinning or lighting up. If still not visible, open Disk Management on Windows to see if it appears without a letter assigned. The drive may need to be mounted through the Mac-drive reading tool.
Problem 2: Permission Errors When Copying Files
Some Mac drives have user permissions that prevent copying. Try adjusting access permissions in your drive-reading software. Most tools have an option to enable full read-only access.
Problem 3: The Drive Is Encrypted (FileVault)
If FileVault encryption was turned on for your Mac, you’ll need the old user password to unlock the drive. Most Mac-reading utilities on Windows allow you to enter the password when you try to open the drive.
Problem 4: Photos Library Is Corrupted
If the Photos Library is damaged, you might still be able to recover images by digging deeper into subfolders. The original image files often remain intact even if the library’s structure is broken.
Step 14: Long-Term Photo Safety Tips
After going through the recovery process, it’s important to establish a long-term backup routine so you never face the same issue again. Here are simple habits to protect your photo collection:
- Keep at least two backups, one local and one offsite or cloud-based.
- Export photos from the Photos app regularly as standalone image files.
- Use Time Machine or another automated backup system on your current computer.
- Test your backups periodically to ensure they still open and contain your latest photos.
Remember: the safest photos are the ones stored in more than one place.
Why Manual Extraction Is Worth It
Although iCloud Photos is convenient, it’s not a true backup system, it’s a synchronization service. If you delete a picture on one device, it disappears everywhere. By manually extracting your photos from your old Mac and saving them as real image files, you gain full control and independence from Apple’s ecosystem. You’ll be able to open, copy, and move your photos anywhere, on Windows, Linux, or any future operating system, without depending on Apple software or accounts. This approach ensures your memories remain safe and accessible no matter what happens to your hardware or cloud services.
When your old Mac won’t boot, it’s easy to panic, but in most cases, your photos are still there, safely stored on the internal drive. With a bit of effort and the right tools, a Windows PC can read that drive, access your Photos Library, and extract every picture inside as regular image files.
By following these steps: retrieving the drive, mounting it on Windows, opening the Photos Library, and copying the contents of the Masters or Originals folder, you’ll end up with a complete, organized set of your photos backed up to an external drive. Once you’ve verified and organized everything, you’ll have peace of mind knowing your memories are safe and future-proof. And after experiencing a failed Mac, you’ll appreciate the importance of maintaining regular, redundant backups of your photo collection.