Q: I'm buying a new computer, and will be going from IPhoto to Photos. I hear bad stories about Photo throwing IPhoto pictures into disarray. What can I do to prevent this? I have my pictures in regular folders. Do they need to be in Albums?

Since in both iPhoto and Photos folders hold only albums and other folders we can only guess are what you have - to answer your question we must use the correct terms

in iPhoto you have events - are you mistakenly calling events folders? If so then events in iPhoto are converted to albums in Photos and stored in a folder named iPhoto Events

this explains how the migration handles content and metadata - How Photos handles content and metadata from iPhoto and Aperture - Apple Support

anf this article give hints on preparing for and accomplishing the migration - Notes on Migrating an iPhoto Library from iPhoto to Photos for Mac

and these articles discusses the differences in the two programs -  Photos 1.5 vs iPhoto 9.6.1:  Features and Capabilities  --      Moments in Photos are the New Events

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Those folder have albums and/or other folders in them - again albums have photos in them, folders have either albums or folders in them

and as described in the link on how Photos migrates content,  folders and albums are brought across unchanged

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