Diskferry

Get files off an old Mac's drive on a Windows PC

You have a new Windows PC and your files are on a Mac drive: an external backup drive, or the disk out of an old Mac. Whether a PC can read it depends on what kind of drive it is.

Drives a PC can read with Diskferry

  • External hard drives and SSDs, USB sticks and SD cards formatted on a Mac as APFS or Mac OS Extended.
  • A hard drive or SSD taken out of an older Mac and connected to the PC with a USB enclosure or adapter. Some Mac SSDs use Apple-specific connectors and need an adapter made for that model.
  • Disk images (.img, .cdr, uncompressed .dmg) of such drives.

Drives a PC cannot read

  • The internal SSD of a Mac with a T2 or Apple silicon chip. Diskferry does not support it. Its data is encrypted by that Mac's hardware, and Paragon and apfs-fuse both state they do not support T2 encrypted volumes either (Paragon, apfs-fuse, checked 30 October 2026). The files have to be read through that Mac; if it no longer starts, Apple or a data recovery service is the route.
  • Fusion Drives, where macOS combines an SSD and a hard drive into one volume. Not supported in this version.
  • Time Machine backup disks. Not supported in this version. What works for Time Machine

Copy everything off, step by step

  1. Plug in the Mac drive

    If Windows offers to format or initialize it, choose Cancel.

  2. Click Find Mac drives

    Windows asks once for administrator permission. A small helper opens only disks that carry a Mac partition, read only, hands them to Diskferry and exits.

  3. Browse the volume

    Each drive gets a card with its Mac volumes, their format and size. Click Browse, open folders and click a file to preview it.

  4. Copy out and verify

    Tick files or folders (nothing ticked copies the whole folder), choose a folder on your PC and copy. Every copy is read back and compared by SHA-256.

DiskferryMicrosoft Store

Check first, pay later: finding the drive, browsing and previewing are free. If your photos and documents are there, the one-time US$14.99 unlock copies and verifies them.

After copying

Your copies are normal Windows files. A Mac Photos library shows up as a folder named Photos Library.photoslibrary, with the photo files inside it; copy the whole folder. Keep the Mac drive unchanged until you have checked the copies.

Questions

My MacBook will not turn on. Can I take the SSD out?

On Macs with a T2 or Apple silicon chip the internal SSD is encrypted by that chip, so Diskferry and the other tools named on this site cannot read it in another computer. On older Macs with a removable drive, a matching enclosure or adapter lets a PC read it with Diskferry.

Do I need a Mac at all?

Not for ordinary APFS or Mac OS Extended drives: Diskferry reads them on Windows. For Time Machine backups and T2 or Apple silicon internal SSDs, yes.

Last updated 30 October 2026. Still stuck? Support replies in person.

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