How to transfer photos from PC to mac in >1 event

[Newkid99]

Hi

New to this, so hope this isn't an old question - I did look and couldn't find it
I want to transfer my photos currently on PC to my mac. I have been told that if I do so through an external hard drive then they will load onto the mac as one event. If that is the case I'd prefer another way ... as I have over 19,000 photo's currently sitting in folders according to year, month and then the specific event.

I have an external HD and also Parallels Desktop.

Would greatly appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks

 

[aristobrat]

At a test, try putting your stuff on an external drive, connect to your Mac, and then drag 'n dropping three our four folders over to iPhoto.

IIRC, as long as your photos are in different folders, they'll come across in different events.

 

[EndlessMac]

Well to start off we need to clarity your definition of 1 event. I define it as one task and not one giant folder with all your images as you seem to think it means. You can copy folders over as the are on your PC and you can do it as one simple task. I'm also assuming you are talking about transferring files from a separate PC computer and not your Windows partition on your Mac? If that is the case then do as follows.

1. Format your external hard drive to FAT32.
2. Drag all your picture folders onto your external HD.
3. Drag pictures folders to wherever you want them onto your Mac.

If you have ever used a flash memory USB stick then it's the same concept. Just think of your external HD as a large flash memory stick. Once you are done and you want to use your external HD as a backup drive for your Mac then you should reformat it to Mac format and not leave it as FAT32 unless you plan on using it on both Mac and PC.

What you should keep in mind is that some of your folder names or picture file names might be shortened or changed because they might not be allowed under the FAT32 format. You have to manually change them yourself once they are on your Mac.