Ethernet connection from iMac to pc transfer question

I'm going to be getting an iMac shortly.
I currently have a Windows PC.
I'm sure I read somewhere that its possible to connect a Mac and a Windows PC together with an Ethernet cable.
What I'm wanting to do is,  rather than transfer my music, photos, documents and other stuff to an external hard drive (plus the time it would take to copy the stuff to the external hard drive) and then copy the stuff onto my iMac, I was wondering if there is a way of been able to connect the iMac and the PC together with an Ethernet cable and  have both the machines switched on and basically use the Mac to access the hard drive on the Windows PC to then copy the desired information over to the iMac.
I know there is a Migration Assistant application, but I would rather just copy the stuff over that I'm wanting, then at least I know what's been copied over.
If its possible to connect a Mac and a Windows PC together with an Ethernet cable and from there access the information on the Windows PC's hard drive and copy it over to the Mac. If its possible, could someone provide me with the instructions on how to do this please?
Thanks in advance.

tal1971 wrote:
Thanks for the help everyone, really appreciate the help
I already have an external hard drive that would hold everything. Its just I thought it would take a while to copy the stuff over from my Windows PC onto the EHD, then copy the stuff back off of it to my iMac, and thought if I could have linked the iMac and the PC together, the copying would only need to be done once.
I had an idea yesterday. I have a 3.5 inch hard drive caddy/enclosure. My Windows PC is very easy to get into has its got a full side access panel which removes with two thumb screws. I thought I could remove the drive from my Windows PC, place it in the caddy/enclosure and then connect the caddy/enclosure to my iMac, I could then simply access the information and copy it over to my iMac. This would allow me to copy only the required stuff, I would only be copying stuff over once (rather than twice if I were to copy from my PC to a EHD and then to my iMac). The drive would be in the NTFS format (as its been used on a Windows system) but from my understanding Mac can read drives formatted in this, it just cannot write to it without third party software. Would the removing drive, placing it in a caddy/enclousure idea work OK?
Yes that is a great idea, I'd recommend going that route!

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