FWIW, the Apple Stores have a transfer service and will move your files for you. I use a 1 terabyte HD with firewire 800 (see what your PC has) but you can also get them for USB2. Just offload everything to the portable drive and you can make it available to two computers or use it to transfer the files to your Mac.
You can get a 500 gig for around $100 now, and you can use it as your Time Machine after you’ve done your transfers. The Geek Squad guy should have done that if he couldn’t get both computers on the network.
Some of my files and data are messy and scattered. I hate file maintenance.
500 gb for $100 is pretty good, man I'm having to watch the outflow of my money pretty tight right now. It adds up so fast. Do I want a Time Machine? I like to have total control. But somehow some of my photo files got dropped when I backed them up onto the Passports then one time restored some back to my hd from those. I have to be very careful how I copy and keep my wits about me while doing that. Naturally being the control freak I am, I don't want to use the software that came with the Passports, just do it manually. Some of it doesn't matter now as a lot of my photos aren't worth keeping, but I hate that I did that and not sure how it happened. So I lost a couple of months somehow. If your backup is wrong and you restore that (which I have done), then you wipe out what you copy over.
What I need to know is if I can use the same photo file structure on the imac. I set it up myself on my pc although there are programs you can use. The only downside to my system is that I can only do limited searches, and after years of photographs, I forget which year and month and have to browse a lot to find them. See below where I tried to show in schematic form how it is set up. Some folders have other subfolders for one reason or another. That was a lot of verbiage but what I need to know is can I copy the master folder containing all the levels of subfolders onto the mac and will it use the same file structure and file names I set up? That's one thing holding me back.
As to copying, I can start it going and just let it run and do something else so speed isn't that big of a deal compared to the rest of it. I don't have a checksum or mechanical way to know if anything got dropped like pro software probably does. File sizes are meaningless because of the ways files are copied, they don't always take up exactly the same amount of room, this is copying back and forth on my pc. File counts probably work, read a discussion on dpreview about why but forget now.
Once I can get some understanding of how to browse on the mac, then I can check if all my files got transferred the way I wanted. I use windows explorer with a nifty little addon called Microsoft RAW Viewer and Thumbnailer rather than browse with PS, just handier and takes too long to open PS. That will let me see thumbnails of all my photos whether they are in .jpg or .CR2 file format, but I'll lose that if I upgrade to a new camera because it won't read the newer .CR2 files.
Maybe this will help. It's like a regular file tree. Here's an example for two months of this year:
Canon EOS-20D
xx2009
xxxx0901 January
xxxxxxxxJanuary 1 2009
xxxxxxxxJanuary 9 2009
xxxxxxxxJanuary 10 (and more days) 2009
xxxxxxxxWork File
xxxx0902 February
xxxxxxxxFebruary 12 2009
xxxxxxxxFebruary 28 2009
xxxxxxxxWork File
and back through the years
The x's are spaces for indents, I can't get the html to code right, and I wasted a heck of a lot of time on it, tried sp with < and > tags, didn't work.
And so on. Sometimes I have subfolders to Work Files depending on the project. 66.1 gb. Not that bad.
When I had my camera before that, all the files are organized the same way except the master file was named Olympus C4000Z. I can remember what I took with which camera. That one won't be 66.1 gb, had to offload it onto a Passport because the 2nd hd is full again, and don't feel like dragging it out right now, it will be smaller because it was just a 4 mp camera, and I think only 3 years' worth of photos with that. I'm up to 5 years now with the 20D.
If I get a new camera, I'll start a new master file and would like to continue the same system on the imac archaic though it may seem to some.
As to my Passports, I "virtually" partitioned those myself. I have a folder called "Backup C" and Backup E" for my two internal hard drives, then all the subfolders on each drive.
Sorry this is so long and I'm tired now, long day, probably makes no sense and not worth plowing through.