New iMac, have several questions

Question

Community,
First of all I'm not sure if this is the right community to post to. My questions seem to span several forum categories. If there is a better general forum for my questions, please let me know.
I just got a new iMac, (21.5 inch late 2013), with a 1T fusion drive and pre-loaded with Yosemite (version 10.10.1). My "old" iMac is a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo vintage 2006 model with 3G RAM and running Leopard and Snow Leopard. I'm trying to learn the ins and outs of my new iMac and Yosemite and I have some questions. Keep in mind that I'm an old dog trying to learn some new tricks, so please be patient.
1. I think I may already have the answer on this one (via the FAQ I read about Fusion Drives) but I'll ask anyway just to be sure I understand. On my previous macs, I've always partitioned my hard drive into 3 or 4 partitions and I would like to do the same with my new iMac. I tried following the Disk Utility Help but I'm running into a problem. Apparently I can only partition my fusion drive into two partitions. If I try to further partition either of those partitions I find I can only merge the existing two partitions back together. According to the Disk Utility help file, I should be able to create as many partitions as I want. So which is correct, the FAQ, (only two partition on a Fusion Drive), or the Disk Utility help, (as many partitions as I want)? And if I can have more than two partitions, how do I do that?
2. Related to question 1, I also have an external hard drive (plain vanilla iOmega type) that is connected to my old iMac via USB cable. I use it for backup storage. Will there be any problem using that drive with my new iMac?
3. One of my partitions is for Windows. I know OS X has Boot Camp but my understanding is that a user must restart when switching between OS X and Windows. Is that still true for Yosemite? If so, I'll stick with Parallels.
4. Related to question 3, the help link for setting up Boot Camp indicates I need a 64 bit version of Windows 7. I have a 32 bit version. Is that an issue (keep in mind, I'll likely be using Parallels)?
5. More on Windows. I see there is an option to format a Windows partition as MS-DOS FAT. On my old iMac my Windows partition was formatted as normal Mac OS Extended (journaled) and that works fine. Is there a reason I should format the Windows partition on my new iMac as MS-DOS FAT?
6. I miss seeing the hard drive icons on my desktop, everything seems to be in the dock. Is there a way to show my hard drive icon and any other partitions on my desktop?
7. Of course my biggest job will be to transfer data from my old iMac to the new one. The Firewire port on my old iMac is dead (zapped by lightning a few years ago). What is the best way to transfer data between the two computers? Note, I see a warning in the Disk Utility help file that "to prevent loss of data on your Fusion Drive don't connect it to a mac that's using a version of OS X older than 10.8.5". Is that warning relevant to transferring my data since my old iMac has
10.5.8 and 10.6.8?
That's my first barrage of newbie questions. There will likely be more.
John

Answer 1

Niel,
Thanks for the quick reply. I understand 1, 2 and 3. I'll check with the Parallels people to get full resolution on items 4 & 5. It's a shame about the restart requirement for Boot Camp.
Item 6 is a "duh". If I'd looked further I could have answered my own question.
For item 7 I didn't get a definitive answer to my question about the relevancy of the warning. Is there an issue? For the answer you did provide are you saying i should dump everything from my old iMac onto my external hard drive and then move that external drive to the new iMac and load it? With regard to using a network approach, all I have is airport to my DSL router from my old iMac and then either Firewire or airport from the router to my new iMac. How would I use that setup? I have no other local or remote "network".
John