Buying first mac - how best to migrate from W7

[DrDoug]

Hi there

Am about to take the plunge and get my first mac. Will be the 27" iMac i5.
I am looking forward to using mac os (for the first time since 1996) but have a few windows based problems I need sorting out.

At the moment I have 3 volumes in my PC. 1 has Windows on it, the other 2 are for photos/music/Video. I want to use at least the 2 media drives on the mac (external enclosure FW 800?). I will also want windows 7 running on he mac (bootcamp?).

So specific quetions are:

1: is FW800 best interface for external HDD?
2: will windows boot from external HDD?
3: is external HDD quick enough for iTunes/iMovie (I do a lot of HD video editing)
4: will windows 7 x64 be much better than x32 on the mac?
5: will I have to reformat my NTFS drives? If so, can I read from them via FW and back them up on the mac first?

Any other tips? Really scared of losing all my data. Will also need to soRt out my iPhone sync, so lots to think about!

Thanks and apologies for a long rambly message. It's nearly 1am and I've spent all day Reading forums!

Cheers. D

will I have to backup all my data, reformat

[ahankinson]

1. FW800 should be plenty fast for your purposes.
2. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=191777.
3. See #1.
4. How do you define "better"? Faster? Probably not. Able to address more than 4G RAM? Yes.
5. NTFS is read-only on Snow Leopard, unless you hack it. (See http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=785376).

[DrDoug]

Thanks for your help. I think I have my solutions organised.

Am going to get 1TB in the iMac. Will use Bootcamp to install Win7 on a 100GB partition, but will install most windows stuff (games installs) on an external drive.

Will also use external drive (same physical drive, different partition?) with my media on, but probably only need access in OSx.

I am not sure I will need external drive as NTFS or FAT/FAT32. Or perhaps one external drive for OSx and one for Win7

Cheers

doug

[yayitsezekiel]

OP, if you're using snow leopard it is x64, not x86 (32 bit) fyi

[DrDoug]

Sure, I meant 64bit or 32bit...

But am more focused on my questions about the HDD..

[pilotkid]

If you really want the easy route when you get your iMac take it and your windows pc to Apple and have them transfer everything for you. I'm pretty sure they'll do it for free with a new Mac purchase, only downside is I think you'll have to wait at least a day or two and if your like me when I get a new "toy" i want to "play" with it NOW!:D

[DrDoug]

It seems that such services cost extra at the Apple Store. Have managed to transfer most things fairly easily actually. Everything seems to work so easily. Once the PC is empty, I will reformat the old SATA drives and use them on the iMac.

It is true what they say about macs. Not fiddling with drivers and settings may save me hours of time per month. I could develop a new hobby...

Thanks for your help.

[Stealthipad]

Boot Camp and Win7 work great on a iMac! Win7 performance is outstanding.