How to get photos from PHOTOS LIBRARY on a SSD onto PC

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Level 1

9 points

How to get photos from PHOTOS LIBRARY on a SSD onto PC

My friends MacBook Pro A1398 (2012) is toast. To recover his files I took the 250gb SolidStateDrive out of it.

I hooked the SSD to an USB adaptor and plugged it into a PC, but I could not see any files on it. So I hooked the SSD to an USB adaptor and plugged it into another MacBook Pro 13" A1278 (2010 OS.10.10.3 with photos version 1.0(209.52.0)) . I can now see all the files on the SSD.

I want to copy all his photos from the SSD to the Mac, then to a external harddrive, then from the ext HD to a PC.

The problem is I cannot find his photo files. I see a 13g file called photos library.photoslibrary

But I can't drill into that file, it does not seem like a folder. I tried to open the file, but I get this message:

Unsupported library. The library "photos libray" is from a newer version of photos. Please upgrade photos to open this library. And I see a button labeled CREATE NEW...

So how do I get all his photos out of this file and then onto a PC??

Why does apple put all the photos in a single file that makes it so hard to get at each file??

MacBook Pro

Posted on May 11, 2016 8:14 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,705 points

May 11, 2016 11:32 PM in response to Tacoma50

Is the SSD drive your friend removed the internal system drive? Then try to boot your 13"MBP from that drive.

Shut down the MBP, then start it again while holding down the options key ⌥ to bring up the startup manager.

If you are lucky, the MacBook Pro should start into the same system as your friend used and you can launch Photos to export all files.

If it is not possible to boot your Mac from the external SSD, restart the Mac normally and select the Photos Library in the Finder. Right-click or ctrl-click it, then select "Show Package Contents"- Open the Masters folder in the window that opens. It will contain all photos, if your friend did not use iCloud Photo Library.

Copy the Masters folder and the Previews folder to an external drive to save them.

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