Data Migration

Connect the two Macs with an Ethernet cable and try to boot the old MBP into Target Disk Mode. If that's successful you can access the drive from the Mac Mini M1.

You may have to get an adaptor for the Mini so it can use an Ethernet cable. Read the Apple document and see what type of cable or adaptor to get.

Can you attach an external screen temporarily to the old mac? Then make a Time Machine backup on an external drive.

Use that drive to migrate.

IMPORTANT: when migrating elect to bring ONLY the user accounts. This will save you from a lot of potential problems, as it will not bring to the new mac any old system extensions and such, that can cause issues in the new mac.

I don't think Target Disk Mode works over Ethernet.

I had thought of TDM as well, and it does work over Thunderbolt, but the problem there is that one would probably need to buy a TB3-TB2 adapter (depending on the age of the old MBP, of course) plus a Thunderbolt cable.

For far less money than that the cost of the cables, one can get an external USB drive, which can then be used for backup going forward.

McStein wrote:

Update: The old mac has sat for a year or so - just I charged it up & booted it up - it actually worked! This has happened before but when I shut it down it refused to boot back up. So now I'm leaving it up 'till I can figure out what connection cables/devices I need to connect to my Mac Min M1 to migrate data. Thx for the tip on the user accounts!

That's great.

I still recommend using a backup drive, but now you can, if you want to, do it directly, over Ethernet or even Wifi.

Depending on how much data there is, the Wifi route may take longer and it may be more prone to failing, but I have seen it work.

The way to do it directly is to first start Migration Assistant on the OLD mac, and choose "TO another mac".

Then in the new mac, choose "From another mac, disk or time machine backup", then select the old mac in the options that are presented.

Yup. I was thinking of Firewire which was the last time I used Target Disk Mode ( a long time ago).